Troptomos Colony
by Uros Osium Tokker
Summary: He had been denied his childhood; he had been denied his own family and happiness. With anger burning his naive young self away, he would grow to hate The Company and wish for retribution. After being finally found and used as another test subject inside the city they had condemned, he has only one thing to do: Survive, find a way out... and find his father to give him what is due.
1. Ivory Tower

_**Troptomos Colony**_

_**Chapter one: Ivory Keep**_

I do not own Alien (Xenomorphs), nor do I own Predator (Yautja) or their universes, mingled or otherwise, which includes Weyland-Yutani and the technologies shown within comics, books and movies. This will be the only time I will say this so that is that.

I own the characters in this story and the story itself, as well as any creature or ship I have made up (Or basically let's say 'pulled out of my arse). For those that know me, or probably my previous work, please, refer to my profile for an update on how things are going.

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With a sigh, he opened his eyes.

The sudden burst of light that the ceiling lamp, behind the glass that amplified it, made him cringe, but it was good to wake you up, even if you hadn't sleep much. As he grunted, shaking his head at this shocking way of getting himself out of bed, he had to look right and left in search of something.

As always, the room was filled with the machinery he had been hooked with, including the catheter and his bed, which was basically a metallic table that he had been used to after the last ten days. At his right were some machines that were reading his brainwaves and heartbeat, they seemed advanced, for a lack of a better term, and had been linked with some kind of device attached to both brain and heart. The things were huge though, so they took a good portion of the walls of the right, while at the left there was a table with equipment that was encrusted with _his _dried blood, though they were messed together, as if they had been fused. There was also a screen with some X-Ray images of him, but nothing else.

Luckily, there it was! Under the screen he had left the glasses that had been like a part of his body for the past ten days, and it was not in a figurative way either! After what had happened here, the glasses, a visor type model that hid the front of his face, had been engineered to fit perfectly and to connect to specific holes behind his ears, sending a stimuli to the brain so they would start working.

Eyeing them, he felt the necessity to put them on, but also the struggle to NOT do it.

The glasses were a reminder that he had been controlled all his life, that he had been used by everybody he came to know in the few years that he had a life. Touching the smooth superior and light alloy only made him think that he had been wanted by the one person he looked up as a child so he would end up in this situation.

It had been fifteen years, and he still felt bitter about it.

Fifteen years ago, he had been told by his father, Jonas Ibraham, that he had been promoted to a big and important position within the company known as Weyland-Yutani. At first his father had been part of pest control in a world far away, one that was not really developed and used as a resort for the rich and powerful to relax and hunt. However he had helped some executives from Weyland-Yutani during an accident and they allowed him to take some tests to let him have a position with them. The test came back with interesting results showing the innate mathematical and programming talent that his father had developed during the years as a way to vent out the frustration of his job, which made him someone valued to The Company.

His mother, Ashara Antioch, had been more than delighted to hear it. She was a much simpler woman than his father, not that she was stupid or anything, he would NEVER say such a thing of his mother, but she did her best to never think too hard after living in misery for most her life, now simply wanting to be happy. She had been a guide for the tourists and usually a hunting aide, which made her, much like his father, a good survivor in quite adverse conditions.

It would be much later when he would find out his father had basically sent them to this place so he would get rid of them both.

Before he ever thought about that, he had been delighted at seeing Troptomos, a moon in the outer reaches of human space. It was one of the five moons circling a gas planet in an orbit around a blue sun that was especially good for life to be found. Two moons were rainforests, one of them a desert with an intense cave system full of water. The four one was this one, Troptomos, and the twin moon that was not too far away from it.

These moons were full of plains, valleys and rivers, both of them were quite big for moons, mere planetoids still, but good enough for quite a few colonies on their surface. Still, the company that had made this colony, one that was opposed to Weyland-Yutani, had used one third of its resources to build this place and contract people as well as to find colonists. The other third had been used for a colony of the same proportions not far away, with the remainders saved in case something went wrong. Still it needed help, and Weyland-Yutani offered peace by giving part of the needed equipment and personal for a time.

One of the things they leaned was security force, colonists eager to reach a new and safe home that had jobs and, of course, a huge cargo ship that would carry them all and many creatures of another planet that had nearly the same composition as this one. The creatures would receive the blame of what would happen, being huge as the Kansotauros are (quadruped lizards, one and half times bigger than a bull, usually used as a source of food, clothing and other materials in warm planets with few forests), though they weren't the only creature that the ship had.

He and his mother had been the last ones to awaken from the cryo-pods, everyone else had left the spaceport and the ship, leaving only the personnel from The Company to see that he and his mother went away. At that exact moment there had been a scream, a few gunshots and then a huge creature of black coloration came towards them, crushing his mother against the wall near the exit hatch and drenching his face with a burning liquid that made him cry and stumble about for a few minutes.

By the time he recovered enough of his senses, and his face wasn't on fire, he was outside of the spaceport and had, somehow, ended up inside a dry manhole that was still being constructed. There was no one here, but some of the guards came searching for him, which is the moment when he heard of the plan that involved them having an 'accident' on their way to the colony, a few kilometers away from the spaceport.

It was unbelievable, but as he heard them going through the mission to ensure it was all done, he had to admit that it had been detailed quite nicely. His father had basically been asked one thing, one and only VERY important thing: If he was to be let inside The Company and into the secrets within, he had to show that he was dedicated to it beyond anything else. Part of that meant to help cripple the rival company's projects and, at the same time, show that Weyland-Yutani was willing to help, even if they encountered loses.

His family had been the bargain chip, and he had accepted. His father had basically told them to go die far away from where he could see them, only to live a life of luxury and power.

If it had any other explanation, at eight years of age he didn't care much for it. He had heard enough and he had to admit that if one thing he had from his father, it was the fact that he was very vengeful and he never would forget or forgive. For that reason, and knowing that he would get killed if he got back up, he did what any other kid in his situation could do: He cried.

For two days he wasted always, feeling sick and full of pain, until he decided that he would live in the sewers. He was very young and thought everyone was against him, so he found himself a weak section of the sewers and made himself a small hole to live in. It would take time to get used to the smell, and much more to the fact that he had to eat vermin from many different worlds, of different sizes and, in some cases, of many hidden dangers to him, but he would survive and grow.

Growing to be one meter seventy three and weight around ninety kilos, John would have very short white like hair (very clear grey) and yellow eyes under the stern face that hid most of what he thought behind both a brutish look (from his burnt face) and a silent attitude, as he hadn't talked nearly at all since he was a child. His body would become slender and fibrous, used to resist poisonous environments and food, as well as to survive killing creatures within the dark spaces of the sewers. For that reason he was nearly blinded by sunlight and his skin was extremely pale, which made him look alien to some.

Still, as he grew, and before he turned out as strong as he was today, he had been a coward child that wanted nothing else but to see his mom again and hurt his father for what he had done. For that exact reason, when he found that somebody knew about him, he was scared out of his wits as a PDA had been left in front of his little home with the words 'I know you are there…' as only warning.

He had moved away from that place, but it had only served to have a few days as another PDA lied in front of his new hole. This time the personal computer read 'I can help you… if you do as I say'.

John had wanted nothing else but to run, but he supposed that if he did so, whoever knew of him would, for sure, find him again. This time he waited in the same spot and, when he woke up, another PDA was waiting for him. In this occasion it had a map that showed the whole sewers, it also showed the location of motion detectors and cameras, whit a path very well signaled to lead him towards the head building of Weyland-Yutani within the colony.

Out of curiosity and, in part, wishing to see if there was any information about the creature that had killed his mother, or about his father (which for him was basically the same at that age), he crawled towards the building's location and used the air vents to spy on everyone. The PDA received a message when he was about to reach one of the laboratories that the little base had inside its depths.

'Wait until everyone goes… I will let the security down for a few seconds so you can search'

Unsure if it would be true or not, he just waited until it was night and only the bare minimum personnel were around so as to see if this person would do as they promised, and to see if he/she could be trusted. He had been watching many experiments with some creatures he did not know, but once everyone went away and the power was cut off, John ran to catch papers that the scientists had been using.

He was not going to take them with him however, he just was curious about the creatures, as some looked like the one that had done… that thing, but he was sure that there was no way for him to do anything to them. Of course he was not sure what he was hoping to find on the notes, he was too little to understand most words, but he would remember the words: Xenomorph experiment Beta: Status… escaped, marked for extermination.

The Company had brought other creatures like the one that had escaped, they were having them here and they would probably hurt a lot of people. Having the notes for a few more seconds, John was surprised to see the lights coming back, so he left the papers back and scurried to the sewers again.

A process very similar to this one would take place once a month or each two or three months. In time he would come to learn that this was done because, from time to time, the clean energy (renewable resources) that this colony used was not prepared for the inclusion of Weyland-Yutani's exigencies. For that reason, the generator that used upgraded solar receptors, waste disposals and the nearby river to acquire energy, was not enough to satisfy their requirements all the time.

From time to time John had hours to search the base, or at least minutes, but the first day was the only day he had only a few seconds. Time for him to search would grow along his age, he would come to lose his childhood quite quickly spying on the experiments the people did to innocent creatures, and even other people, as well as because what he had to do to get feed every day, as the few times he went to the surface someone had tried to sell him to security.

Yet, as he grew, he came to see light shed into what had happened and what were those things that had killed his mother.

Called the G-Strand (Or Gene for shorts), they had been a project that the Weyland-Yutani corporation had been trying to get through after their last mishap with another project called the K-Series. This version of the project had been an early deviation from the K-Series and was designed to evolve into many creatures from a single 'host'. He found about the host at age thirteen, it was one of the most horrid things he had seen, and one of the few that would make him think that Weyland-Yutani should be destroyed to the last man. He was only thankful her mother had been killed outright instead of used for that.

Outside of that, John found out that one of the reasons the company called the 'Kraken Corps' had invested so much into constructing this colony. It seemed that the head of the company had made some kind of agreement with an intelligent species known as Yautja (as far as the information from Weyland-Yutani said) and had received some kind of technology from them, technology used for the generator and the powered up solar panels and other equipment such as weaponry and armor. Weyland-Yutani was known to promulgate humanity superiority (besides its own gain), so knowledge of said deal had made sparks fly.

It quickly became apparent that the monsters called Xenomorphs, another alien species, was going to be used to wipe this colony and hurt Kraken as much as possible. Weyland-Yutani had no qualms about killing many innocents, including their own men, to also test the power of the G-Strand and employ new cyber-organic technology that they had been preparing for this situation.

In the end, it would be all an experiment for the power hungry corporation.

Then, a month before his accident, John found out the last PDA message 'They are getting ready to start this mess. Go learn what you can before this goes to hell'.

Doing exactly that, John went to the labs once again. By now he knew the construction from head to toe, and he was quick inside the vents as if he was a snake, used to artificial light and the darkness much more than the world outside. However it would come a surprise to see that this time he was being watched.

When the power went away, he was greeted by a man in armor that handed him a document while pointing one of the famous pulse rifles at him. The document detailed all about a mechanical arm, artificial muscles and skin, as well as neural connections to a visor that increased sight, reflexes and controlled the arm with at least five times more strength than a human. The man wouldn't say anything; he only pointed his hand towards John and then laughed, which prompted the young man to scurry away before the security guard started shooting.

One of the bullets had grazed his leg as he fled, it was not much, but soon it would show symptoms of being infected, something that John had grown out of after getting accustomed to the sewers.

At first it was not bad, the first week it just stung a bit, the second it hurt when he had to use his leg in a fight when he went to feed, but it was still nothing. By the third week he was hurting as he walked and when the fourth came to an end he was about to scream at each step of the way. Finally he was forced to get to the surface and seek for aid. He didn't know all that well how technology worked, but if he hadn't lost his PDA after the security guard shot him, he would've tried to get into contact with the one that sent him the message.

No one would have it as a surprise though, he was being watched all the time, and he had always been watched. It all became clear when he got to the surface and a group of guards, including the one that shot him, were present. He was going to be apprehended before a heavy duty truck came crashing towards the street they were in.

He had decided, on one of those common rainy days, to get to the closest hospital in the colony. Being the thing bigger than any city on Earth, he had any place to chose, but no, he wanted to go to the biggest hospital out of fear, fever and pain. He wanted his leg cured and he didn't mind that the main road passed right behind the manhole he had used, much less that it was one of the rainiest weekend in the moon's cycle. It happened to be the day when an angry driver had decided to take one too many drinks and, after he came crashing through the road, he also took John's left arm.

John was only happy that some part of the plan to capture him went wrong, but as he went in and out of unconsciousness, he saw that it had only helped them somehow as he could see a mechanical arm being attached to him, blood everywhere and, at some point, the reflection of his head being split open.

After that, it had been this room, this room and the others connected to it, nothing else for ten days.

Outside of this damn room there was little asides a corridor that connected with a door that was close in front and two other corridors at the side, one going to a kitchen that had, by now, nearly no food for him to prepare (Or eat raw, as he was not really that good at cooking as you can guess) and another room full of training equipment and an holographic trainer that had helped him understand how many of the weapons and technologies of the modern day worked. From his time as a child to now, he had never had to learn so much in so little time; however he had forced himself to do so.

For some reason he was sure that once the last door opened, he would never come back here again, and he would never be safe. It was either because of The Company or something else. He was not sure, yes, but he was not stupid.

With a final sigh he took the glasses and put them on his head. The things were light, but as he had learned (by accident), they could support his whole weight with no problem (though he wouldn't try again). They also highlighted his vital signs with no problem, letting enough illumination through them for him to see perfectly while also having the few images (mostly his body, blood pressure, heart rate and so on) still clear as a day in the corner of his vision. If he took a weapon from the training room with his left hand, the sensors would indicate how many bullets were in, they would also have a memory bank for munitions he knew that he had on his person (But if they fell of him and he didn't notice, they wouldn't change until he tried to get the numbers right).

It seemed to be a very costly upgrade, a beta version of something, but John was appalled to think people would want to sacrifice part of their own bodies to give Weyland-Yutani another hold on them. The Company had nearly everything under their grasp, and people with these things would probably be controlled as tightly as John obviously had been during practically his whole life.

Thinking was of no use however. John let his musings for later and went to the kitchen, picked up a can of food that he didn't even bother to look at before he opened it and downed the contents into his stomach with barely a chewing movement. He had to eat much worse much more often than this, so this was gourmet's food for the young man. Afterwards it was a time to down a good chunk of water and head for the training room's shower.

After a good bath, and the morning ritual that everyone has to do, John picked the yellow overalls and the sport shoes from nearby, not bothering covering his white (practically in the literal way) chest with the green leather vest as he began his daily training. If they wanted him to do something, he was going to first break someone's bones by being in good enough condition.

It took him probably two hours of getting tired, having his life meant having quite a lot of stamina after so much hunting and running, so after another shower, something he had been basically addicted to after the first time, he took a moment to rest on the floor mat.

" Hello? Anybody?"

Wasn't he accustomed to the distorted voice from the hologram, John would've been worried, but this time the voice sounded way too different. As John looked up, he saw why.

"You…" The man that was being portrayed wasn't the artificial image John was used to see, and he was surprised to see him "You are John… You are the kid I was in contact for the last fifteen years, are you not?" John nodded as he eyed the man warily.

He looked old and tired, his bald head, wrinkled face and bags under the eyes of a gentle looking face told him that something was taxing the man more than it should've been. He was probably smaller than John, and was obviously too thin to be healthy, hell, John had probably been fatter than the researcher while eating vermin! Still he seemed to have an air of power around him, as in another time he had been so much more, as the prideful pose that the man had was making even the bland doctor garb look as if it could conceal a weapon of mass destruction that only he could wield.

Or was it that John had learned to despise doctors after the accident and subsequent arm exchange? He wasn't sure.

"I am so sorry to hear" The old man sighed "I am Jacob Hobs, I am with Kraken Corps. I heard of the accident the day the ship touched ground, but wasn't authorized to search as the spaceport outside the colony is property of Weiland-Yutani" The man seemed to have venom instead of words as he talked about The Company "I found traces of a very powerful mutagen though, which led me to see a young boy crying…" Jacob gave him a look, John only returned a frown "I couldn't approach you though, the security team found me and I had luckily found an escaped Kansotauros that they had blamed his mother's death to, so I had a backup for them not finding said child"

Jonh growled at the mention of his mother and everything he remembered clear as a day as something that was in the past. Jacob simply nodded, more than understanding enough, as he carried on.

"I managed to get a friend of mine to track you again and deliver the first and second PDA. I wanted to retrieve you at first, but he watched you as you acted… like an animal when you at last needed food" Jacob gave an apologetic look "I was sure there was no way you could let me talk you into waiting and letting me help, much less so when you moved away and my colleague had to find you again. However we picked up a sample of your blood and tested on it, seeing that it was changing, part of your composition adapting to where you were"

John's eyes widened as he heard the old man explain how the G-Strand had a highly unstable mutagen that had, initially, been tested into humans to allow them to be much more than they were today. It was not after it failed that they had used it on a variant of the K-Series that the G-Strand had evolved and showed to have, for example, five easily accessible variants of the Drone, a creature that, as far as John knew, was the basic Xenomorph that you could find almost anywhere.

"As far as we know, three months ago the creatures were released to see how long a hive could last in an environment as rich as this one. That was when you were finished and most Weyland-Yutani forces left the colony"

With his face hardening, John got close to the holographic projector as he almost demanded answers.

"Your connections had to get used to your body. You were put out of commission for three months so your body would get used to the arm you carry now, as well as those glasses" Jacob pointed at each respectively "I had asked you to help me since you were young so I could at least prepare you with information to fight The Company if you didn't want to hear me out when the time came. That last day I was hoping for you to get the blueprints of the thing you have now in your body. I was not aware that they knew all along about you, and wanted you as part of the experiment that is going on now"

Simply waving a hand, John urged him to go on and explain the whole thing.

"Look, Weyland-Yutani want those things to be a weapon. We are fairly sure, thanks to information we have stolen from them, that this hasn't been the first time a species has tried to use them as a weapon… and the last time it didn't go well, at all" The old researcher rubbed his bald head as he tried to relax "Enhancing the mutant gene inside the Xenomorphs so they can mutate into many more species is VERY, VERY dangerous. By now we have so many species around here that normal means and tactics do not work. Most people aren't even aware of Xenomorphs as MOST people prefer to be in the dark, much like nearly all the security forces that were recruited into the militia when the colony was formed"

As the old man kept talking, John took the vest from where it was resting and also went besides the holographic projector to pick up a handgun and four clips loaded to the brim, as well as a backpack and eighty more rounds or so. The shotgun had been emptied the first day as he was angry beyond belief, but he still had two shells nearby for it. Unluckily, the pulse rifle that had been issued had been one of the causalities of his anger.

Jacob didn't mind his activity as he kept on going.

"This gen has even fused some humans with the specimen called 'Facehugger', making them independent Xenomorphs that are basically humans trapped inside their bodies. A lot of them have also gotten their own genitals or other means to reproduce, but they do so with such speed, that even the wars between their own species do not deter them from attacking us" Jacob looked around nervously "I am in a fortified bunker only a few kilometers away from where the Weyland-Yutani, we are at the opposite side of town to the spaceport The Company owns, with the one from Kraken being a nest of those things. Luckily near here we have a canyon, so there is no wildlife for the Xenomorphs and there are very few of them in comparison to the rest of the city"

A glance to Jacob told the old man that he didn't believe that of 'very few'. He had read a lot about them, there was no way that only a couple of the things were still around, no matter how much time had passed.

"Right, right… but you shouldn't worry about that" John jerked to attention as he said that "The alien that ki… the one that originated the accident had been wounded. His blood was still not fully recovered from the mutagen, so it left you scarred in the face, but not about to die of caustic burns and blood loss" Yea, John had to nod at that, he was fallowing him for now "However the mutagen was not the original one, it hadn't been tested in humans… and you absorbed it"

There was a huge realization when Jacob said that.

First: John had been angry at the thing that had killed his mother, but he had given him something that he would be unable to take from his body. The thing had not only taken something very dear from him, but also had marked him as if destiny had decided to fuck with his mind with a final bitchslap to the face before letting him go into the new real, and very dangerous, world.

Second: Whatever had happened, the ones from Weyland-Yutani hadn't killed him only to test the arm on him.

"The ones that had been doing this little job on you, had also run some tests" Jacob took some papers from where he was "It seems your skin should be resistant, somewhat, to the acid blood of the Xenomorphs, or they spit, as well as to the toxins they may create and even to their claws and teeth, but only for so long as you can feed your body" The old man had to rub his eyes before he picked two overly sized glasses from somewhere, obviously the poor man had very bad eyesight and was stressing it in front of John "Should also make you live longer, regenerate fast, that kind of stuff… Anything that would affect a Xenomorph, though, will also affect you a lot, which is why you are hardly sick as Xenomorphs' blood dissolve most invasive cells"

"Also" This time Jacob didn't give him time to do anything else, though John wanted to get out of her and clear his mind already "This should make you unable to get impregnated by the Xenomorphs themselves, at least this mutant strand… If you were to find unmodified ones however, they will go for you before any other creature in the area" Jacob's words, and gaze, were hard as they could get as he took his glasses away "You can regenerate fast, even whole limbs if needed, as far as you can convert enough nutrients and/or fat, but if they are gone? You die, and I don't mean you can go and feed; you will die if your reserves get too low. Also if Weyland-Yutani decides to take the common Xenomorph here to eradicate their own traces, you will get hunted like a pest"

Gulping down, John had to admit he had never had any fear to say the truth, and this time was the same. He had outgrown his fears as a kid, or most likely he had been forced to, but still this made him uneasy.

He was a monster so to speak; he had the blood of his mother's killer within his veins, he had been guided to know his enemy because he was mentally unstable and he would probably endanger anyone and anything to get his revenge, also, if it wasn't enough, it seemed like he was now in between two worlds that wanted him dead for different reasons. He was not sure if he would prefer to be dissected by The Company, or if he hoped for them to release those monsters in here so he would give them the chance.

"There is more" Thank the maker for distractions though "For some 'coincidence', there is a heavy ion storm around part of the solar system since this began three months ago. It is nearly impossible to let communications through and I am sure that more than a few ships have fallen prey of the storm. It probably won't take more than a few days, if not week, for us to have visitors though…" The face that Jacob gave him made John even more uneasy. From a brutal, but 'easy' living in the sewers to this… what a world "And in both cases, we will not have any help from them, in fact they will probably try to kill us"

By then John didn't want to hear more and it seemed that Jacob agreed wholeheartedly as the image changed into a 3D layout of the map. In the far northeast side of the city, near a chasm that had been made by a very powerful current that had been separated from the river the city used, was the base of Weyland-Yutani where he was now. The nearby area was compromised of houses for workers of The Company, a few malls, bars and even an arcade or two, but nothing of really big importance as even the hospital was within these walls.

"Most the surface is a wreck" Jacob said as the image got closer to the Weyland-Yutani HQ "There are a lot of walkways that survivors made to walk from building to building as the Xenomorph presence dwindled, but they are all except safe measure" The old man grumbled as a red line appeared "You can get to the rooftops from the door that has been locked until now. I wouldn't recommend exploring the base as the automatic systems still have enough power to activate the defenses. From the rooftops search for a way to go through the buildings until you reach this point"

From the HQ to a mall that was a few kilometers away. John had stolen from that place once or twice, as it was close to where he nested. It had three floors and was freaking huge, probably because it was one of the few that were close to Weyland-Yutani territory in the city and was cheap in most prices that The Corporation usually inflated to their own workers so the money stayed in line.

He remembered to have heard conversations from time to time when he went in there at night. There were a few high security areas, but he thought it was like in any other mall and the signs were to make people piss off.

"I am here with the lieutenant of the militia and another survivor. We can make runs to the mall's levels to get supplies, but we have already lost two people. If you can secure anything when you come in we would be grateful" The voice of Jacob seemed to be nervous as he talked about that, probably because the situation was very bad, which was understandable "One of the ones we lost is the sister of the civilian with us. We are sure she is not dead, but she has been gone for two days… The most probable outcome if you don't find her when you come to us, is that we will have to declare her dead and move to another safe haven the Lieutenant has marked"

The form of Jacob returned and John nodded. He was not a good Samaritan, but he was not an asshole either. Probably it was simply that he was a survivor by his upbringing, so he would do whatever helped him survive, and being in good terms with the one that seemed to know what to do was a good strategy.

Jacob's image faded and John decided it was time to face whatever was waiting for him out there, so he went to pick any food remaining in the kitchen, turning his backpack into a bloated monstrosity before he decided to go. For anyone normal the weight probably would be hindering, for him it was quite all right, though it had a nasty downside: He would not be able to crawl through tight spaces like the vents, it would be too stuffed for the backpack to fit, and the food was something that he needed to get on the good side of some survivors.

With that done, he checked the pistol; it was standard issued for mercenaries as a heavy duty pistol with the bulky appearance and sturdy form, not much different from the marines' version. It could hold twelve shots, eleven in the clip and one in the chamber, which meant that the fifth and last clip was inside, fully loaded and also he had an extra round to expend. With the graphics in his glasses showing it, John let the pistol rest on his hand as he walked towards the exit.

The shotgun would've been a much better choice though, he knew thanks to the information that, even having an acid spit, it was much more frequent by the Xenomorphs to get close and personal. A pistol, usually with three to four times the stopping power of a pulse rifle (but only half of that of a shotgun) could kill them at a close range, but it was a single bullet against a naturally armored adversary.

John knew how to deal with armored bugs in the sewers, but a cockroach of this size would probably shrug one or two pistol rounds. That thought made him slightly nervous as he waited in front of the steel door that separated him from the new reality that The Company had geared for everyone within the colony.

Sighing, and clutching his pistol, he took the handle, only to be startled by a loud whir as a part of the wall to his side turned to reveal something.

As it turned out, the wall had a hidden movement tracker, one of the newer models with 360º vision and faster tapping of the surroundings than the standard 180º or 360º model. However it was a hindrance as it chugged batteries quite fast, batteries that John didn't have. For that reason he took it and plunged inside the overly filled backpack.

'Too much shit for too much work' He growled within his mind. He was not a smooth talker; in fact he would try his best to not talk at all, mostly because he had discovered way too late that when he was a kid he had swallowed part of the blood of that thing. His throat was partially screwed for that.

He shook his head and opened the fucking door. Too much distraction would end up costing him, luckily the metal looking corridor was empty, and all in its grey glory seemed untouched. The only thing breaking the weird and perfect space was the ladder with two yellow arrows pointing up. There was also the problem that the corridor went on two directions to the sides just before the ladder.

Something was bound to be there. This place was not corrupted by what the Xenomorphs made for their lairs, but they would know someone was here. It was a 100% sure bet that at least one was in wait for him to get out.

Of course it could be that he needed to admit one simple fact: He was getting fucking nervous and maybe suffering some stress.

He had been taken from his home by sickness induced by an asshole that then captured him and basically gave him to mad scientists before his world turned to be an infested roach motel. This was if you only counted the past few days that he knew of, so it was perfectly expected except for him, as he didn't want to look weak to his own mind or to anything he came across.

To prove himself right (or hopefully wrong), he took the pistol and charged forward until he was in front of the ladder, looking right and left with the gun ready to fire. As a last measure he looked upwards as he approached the ladder, but only a tightly shut hatch could be seen.

It seemed no creature was in sight, so he had obviously been worried for nothing. The outside, however, didn't promise so much. For once he took his time and thought of what would have been possible if he had a normal childhood back where he had been born. That place had been a hellhole with so many rich assholes bugging most the population, thinking they were there to serve anyone with enough money, but he would have his father, wouldn't know how much of an asshole he was, and he would have his mother without his own little self mutated over a frigging accident.

A high pitched hiss made him understand something though: Never hope for anything better of what you've got when things are going to hell. You will only earn something even worse.

For some unknown reason, it seemed that someone wanted John to be right about the damn things being in here, though he had to admit he was lucky to an extent. To his right there were four drones, not mutated at all and probably as common as they could get, most probably just breed from something very weak and not really useful to give birth to anything unknown, maybe one of the large pack animals used for food… Whatever the case, they were roughly thirty, maybe forty meters away. That was a downer.

'Cant shot that fast…'

Quickly, John weighed his chances: To fight and survive? Zero, he was not a fast shooter and was not all that good with only ten days practice. The things were too close and, even if they looked malnourished for a creature that was by default thin, he was going to die if they got close enough. However, to climb the ladder and survive? It was a possibility, though he wasn't sure of how good it would be, those things climbed fast as hell if his info was right.

As you may guess, thinking under pressure took little time but also handed mixed results. He wasn't sure of what could happen, he had fought fast and vicious things in the sewers, but this was not what anyone could get used to, except if you were in the Marines and had the biggest asshole for a boss.

But for all his worries, there was something he hadn't accounted for beforehand: He was worried that it was only him and the Xenomorphs AND he was worried that the creatures were looking at him, while in fact there was something that had gotten much, much closer than the bugs.

*Shiiii-nk*

A blade, probably between fifteen to twenty centimeters in length, came in contact with John's chin, making him freeze. The Xenomorphs had been quiet, half sitting and only letting go of the initial hiss as if to warn him, however he hadn't noticed the ripples of movement in front of him, nor the heavy footsteps. He would've noticed the creatures sneaking to his side if he hadn't been so paranoid about everything to know that he was, indeed, right.

The blade pushed forward and John gulped, it was rubbing towards his throat very slowly and he knew that whoever was doing this, was waiting for him to do something. It was either defend or let the one in front of him kill him, because it was painfully obvious that whoever it was, he or she literally cared nothing if he died fighting or not, though the latter was quite tempting.

Xenomorphs close meant, however, that they were waiting for one to do something. They weren't here to help, they were here to hunt, much like the one in front of him, so he didn't really need to fight.

He just needed to give the third faction a reason to move in.

With a low growl, more a cacophony of mixed insults that his throat didn't wish to fully form, John took the blade with one hand, most probably taking its wielder by surprise (And also himself, as it cut deep with a single touch) before he delivered a kick. It seemed to knock him more than the one assaulting him though, as he found himself being thrown back against the ladder as the Xenomorphs hissed and jumped on top of a figure that was probably a head or two taller than he was, yet he could still see clearly through the air, not knowing what had been about to kill him.

Yet, what seemed as an advantage didn't come as such; the blade sliced clean through one of the Xenos' throat, decapitating it just before the monster managed to bite on one of the assaulter's legs. Another one had its arms crushed together against the nearby wall before a powerful lunge from the invisible one made his spine collapse alongside his ribcage, splattering acid blood around.

Instinct told him to fuck the show, so he turned tail and grabbed the ladder. A muffled cry of pain followed. His right arm had been cut deep in the palm, it was not serious for him, but it would sting for, give or take, twelve hours to a day. Pain was of little consequence though, for as he looked to the left, another pair of Xenos had joined and one seemed more interested on him than on helping its own kind.

'Too many fucking drones' His mind hissed as he climbed the ladder as if there was no tomorrow 'Need to get out'

As if agreeing with him, the Xenomorph that had focused on John started to climb behind him. He had fifteen steps of space behind him thanks to an adrenaline impulse, but a single second took two steps away from him. John had little choice but to go faster and hurt his hand after a few more seconds passed, since the thing was still much faster than him and it had decided to grab his leg, throwing a bite with its secondary jaw, narrowly missing his foot.

John took his pistol with his left arm, not caring for the pain that it gave to carry half the weight of the Xeno and his own on his right hand. The movement would be too fast for a person without an adrenaline rush to notice, but he fired two times in fast succession; the first missing by the world, but the second connecting with the thing's lower jaw as it moved away, ripping it away and splattering acid over the ladder.

A loud crack would follow the alien's wild flaying as it smeared the acid all over the metal walls, just a second before the ladder, and part of the construction, gave away to the corrosion as two heavy plates plunged down along the maimed and now corroded section of ladder, taking the alien with them and impaling the creature through its hips as it reached the bottom, only to crush its skull and smearing acid in a wide enough range to even hurt the invisible enemy. A roar mightier than he had ever heard made John understand that saving his own ass had only angered the one down there, that, and that he still had both his legs and his clothes untouched by the mightiest luck there is.

And luck runs out fairly quickly.

* * *

Careless and stupid, hadn't the human been there, there would be six trophies for the wall and not three messes, one utterly destroyed hard meat and wounds to the lower belly and right arm.

But noooo, she had to go and check out a weird thing that the mask said had both traces of the Kainde Amedha, yet was still human. Her matriarch had said nothing about this, in fact she had said that there should be nearly no humans left, much less in these structures.

If her shire saw her, he would be ALL, but proud. In fact if any of her sisters, or her mother, or, hell, anyone else, saw her, she would turn of many colors just thinking of what the hell she could make up as an excuse. Most of her kind would not want to lie so as to preserve honor, but she didn't want herself being humiliated more than anything else. It was a young one's thing, you know, an adolescent… and for humanoids it was usually the same no matter the species, though her kind were fairly more violent about these things.

Yet she had not been violent, swift or accurately enough to earn the respect needed to NOT be ashamed of this mess.

"You are too slow sis"

If there was any other word to define her status right now, she didn't know it, so she went with what she knew.

'Shit'

Sighing, she turned to see one of her brothers, and of the few males, that had accompanied the female clan to this hunt: Kahaba-Nuhd, or Kah for shorts. He and her other brother, alongside three of her sisters, where those that his father had permitted to go to this year's hunts to prove themselves, which basically meant the whole family.

Around three meters ten in height, Kah was a giant for his species, though it was so with a good, and sad, reason for him to be so different from the common Yautja. Being her brother only by father, like in many families, he had only passing features that looked like hers, for example the stripes on his back, which were black for him yet green for her. His eyes were purely blue and not as animalistic as hers, as hers were red near the iris and yellow at the end. He had small locks and his hair's color was light brown instead of the large locks of hair she had, of the normal black like coloration. Also his skin had little dots of dark brown, the rest being light brown or flesh colored in the chest, hers was a tainted brown/green with a good amount of very dark brown dots and slightly flesh like coloration in her belly only.

Kah was one of the two hybrids of human and Yautja in the clan and, like most males, he had the looks of his father, yet the vision of his mother. However it had been known that interspecies breeding could cause such mutations as Kah showed, namely the common human like vision instead of infrared spectrum, a more thoughtful approach to one's feelings instead of the slightly more animalistic (Yet civilized) approach of a true Yautja and, sometimes, abnormal heights (Such as one meter fifty to one eighty, which was smaller than even females, or gigantism in this case).

The mutation that Kah suffered complicated the birth and ended up killing his mother. It happened to some other pups, but as part human he couldn't live it down, which made him wish to become a medic even if first he had to show his skills in the hunt.

"For a hunter that WANTS to be a hunter, you have little skills to show"

Her brother chuckled as he came closer to show his copper like mask, the standard issue shape changed by fangs like protrusions at the front of it to add some personalization. For his size he had an ungodly amount of plate armor all over his body, not minding if his peers would ridicule him for his cowardly wish of protection, as he only cared for surviving to achieve his dream. It was for that reason that most his body was covered in armor, except his hands (equipped with the usual) and his feet.

Asides of his claws, he had no other weapon, not that being so huge and, dare she say, too strong to be considered normal, he needed any other weapon. Even being quite a peaceful Yautja he could break even a veteran's arm with little effort, no need to say what had happened to the Kainde Amedha that he had encountered.

"And you are a prick" She hissed to her brother, preferring to use the insults that he had familiarized himself more than his supposed native tongue. Kah was slightly obsessed with humans, something that had rubbed off on her "Why are you fallowing me again?"

"I said I wanted to explore the building" He shrugged as he came to pat his sister's head, and since she was barely two meters in height, it was easy for him "I found a lot of information in their computers. I suppose training against father's wishes to know their tech have helped. It seems the human you let go has been their latest experiment…"

"I didn't let him go…" She growled as she looked at her brother's back "He just surprised me…"

"Would've surprised me too sis, it would be easier to use my normal vision. The mask would probably not identify either body heat or pheromones correctly" He assured as he looked you the bloody remains to see the man escape and shut the hatch on his wake.

Pity.

"But as it is, we have to go" He let it slide as he looked at the golden like mask of his sister, which had a much sharper (In the literal sense of the word) edges than that of a male. She had also mesh instead of plating in most places, but for a female that was most common "That we have stumbled upon such common prey, even if they weren't pure, means we are far away from the nesting grounds"

"What about the human?"

"Char-Vhra" He chided, a smirk hidden behind the mask as he patted at his sister's shoulder cannon for her to understand there was something to do "Shall we go?"

"…" If she was a human, she would've sighed in annoyance, as it was, she simply turned "Let's go, but hope that we don't have to catch that human because it is messing with the hunt and what we were told to do"

With a path to her back, that almost got her on the ground, her brother just chuckled "Char, my dear, we are still young… should you really start talking like father and be all serious? You'll have all your life for that if you insist on going with the all female clan like you have been for the past two years"

Truth be told, mostly everyone outside Yautja society saw them (if they knew about them and survived long enough) to be merciless hunters that enjoyed the thrill of the hunt above all else, having it as some kind of ritual and honor system that had the strongest one in the lead.

Partially it was true, but the Yautja had the hunt to satisfy the need to kill and to fight, one need that was as dangerous to their own species as it was to everyone else. If one didn't satisfy that need, or if they didn't control it enough, they would kill mercilessly from kids to the old, from sick to those carrying unborn… Their society was usually gentle and pacific in their worlds, but when you were on a spaceship destined to head off for a hunt, the testosterone and the need to fight, combined with the ritualistic and nearly sacred side they entailed, made them show the most dangerous and brutal side of their species.

Yautja were coins with two very different faces, though in any case most humans would only see a brutish, yet highly advanced enemy. It was hard for one species, one that had believed to be the top of the food chain, to accept that they weren't alone and that they could be considered prey, trophies or even food by the most cruel of them, which was better than the slave alternative that some of the less… gentle clans or traitors to their own species would do with them.

All in all, a hunter had to be a powerhouse, very diligent in its kills and at least have a good handful of trophies; both to exchange for equipment and renown and to have for his/hers own pride and possession. The only reason that these two young ones had good equipment was that their father, now an Arbitrator (or hunter of the traitors, called Bad Bloods), had given away some of his fine possessions to have them equipped (As well as having a few of those favors that others owed to him, paid).

Char was the youngest of his daughters, and she knew that their father was ashamed of having sired so few and mostly females, so she wanted to take on the furious and brutal ways that his father showed to everyone else. She didn't want to humiliate his pride and honor showing how gentle he was through closed doors, which made most his mates have stronger genes than her sire did.

"I want to, and I am old enough to do as I please" Char finally took away from her brother "I'll make father proud"

She cloaked again and ran away from her more sensitive brother as the young Yautja chuckled behind his mask.

"Already did… and maybe I'll get you to cheer up father if all goes well" He smirked as he opened a compartment in his wristband, checking some of the notes he had found "Could be easy if I find… hmm… Or maybe not" Returning the papers, Kah looked back to the remains of the ladder "Still, it is worth a try, and it is part of the hunt anyway"

Grinning widely, he decides that it is time to give the human outside another jumpscare. Besides, while he needs to impress his father, he also needs to impress the matriarch of the clan he is in, and doing what she asked as a secondary objective of this not so natural hunt would help him. That said, it could still be a huge waste of time, or the passing grade to solve his problems, both things are very much possible.

'Still' He thinks as he flexes his massive legs 'He is bound to get into problems, which is bound to attract prey…' And then, he jumps.

* * *

John had been resting for a few minutes, engrossed in what he saw once he escaped the 'safe' haven that had been his house for the past ten days. He had never been out of the sewers for more than a few hours in some weird days when he needed food, maybe a day once in his life, but he had seen the cameras in the laboratory eyeing the whole city, one so massive that it was supposed to be, together with its twin, one of the best out there.

Considered the billions it had cost, and knowing that it was not the fault of the company that built it, John had to admit he felt… sad as he saw how it had ended.

The large skyscrapers, the more modest apartments, single houses here and there… A jungle of steel, concrete, rock and plastic, all of it destroyed with remains of cars littering the streets, some corpses still lying where they had felt, both from windows and stands as well as on the ground. Most of the remains of the city had bones of black like coloration from the water, the many fires that probably erupted and the usual shining blue sun.

Probably it was fitting for it to be night, and raining, though with the humidity of this place, rain was common, sometimes a nonstop event.

From here he could see the large building, the 'Krak Supermarket' that he was supposed to head to. For once, and knowing what had been inside, the word 'supermarket' didn't seem to be preposterous to him, as since he was little he had found humanity to not be so great as they thought. Still, from where he stood, it was one of the few buildings to be intact, more or less, and even a few lights could be seen.

A quick glance had told him that he would need to go through two apartments that were connected to the base through walkways, probably some late survivors that had tried to hide in the base. He would also need to go through one of the skyscrapers and, here he hoped he was wrong, go through ground level for a kilometer or two if there were no ways to go besides the storehouse that was near the mall.

It is only a small part of the city however, and farther away he can see gunfire, smoke and a big part of the city probably collapsed for real. What once had been a perfect construction lied now in ruins in so many places that he thought his old home as a five star hotel right now.

Problem being that both the sewers and the metro underground would be crawling with agitated wildlife, as well as Xenomorphs. That bit of idealization was really bad; he had to simply look to understand there was no way that he could go through the city's buildings at all times. In fact even the surface would probably be safe compared to the underground, but as it was there was really no way for him to go through it all, much less the survivors, without getting killed.

And he really needed survivors with him, more so if they reached a working ship.

Right now he wished he had that PDA with him. How he missed the darn thing now, mostly because of the map and the messages. Without the damn thing he had to rely on a lot of luck, and he had already used his fair share. Still there was the chance of him arriving at the place he was supposed to in a single day, with the downer of having to probably sneak around in buildings that had been corroded by acid and weakened by explosions no less, with the treat of having Xenomorphs catching him at any time.

*CRACK! BLAM!*

A shudder ran through John's spine. He was near the edge of the construction, just besides the walkway to the first building. Right now the mall seemed like one of those Ivory Towers his mother told him about when he was young, a place where someone powerful and magical had all the protection and solitude he needed.

As he looked back however, all he cared about said safe haven was for it to be REALLY safe and to be able to defend him from the thing that had literally ripped the steel off its hinges. That hatch was supposed to protect him from the invisible monster that had killed the Xenomorphs, and it had been torn like paper. He could see it for a split second, and he was amazed to see a literal giant emerging from the wreckage of whatever was left of the hatch, as well as three fourths of it scattered around.

Guttural chuckling told him all he needed to know about the thing: It was here to do more than simply amuse him, in fact he wouldn't have a head over his shoulders if he didn't start running, which he did, and was glad to discover nothing had ripped his feet as he was halfway through the walkway.

Of course, and to his shame once he realized it, the thing hadn't taken any part of his body simply because it couldn't step on a gnarly looking group of boards that connected a big ass hole in the wall of a building, treating with going down if something too heavy stopped on it. Yet he could see the ripples of movement on the other side as he gasped for air. It was maybe ten meters of distance, not much, as the roof of the Weyland-Yutani HQ extended towards the buildings around it. John was not sure if the thing would jump at him from where he was, but it was not going anywhere, probably waiting for him to move.

Sighing, and understanding he would need to give his back to his unknown assailant, John looked around the concrete walls, seeing a few corridors crumbled and many a room ripped open by explosions, acids or claw marks. If the thing wanted to come for him, he had the adrenaline and stamina to run for a bit more.

However he would need it for more than just running from this one hunter.


	2. Acid Rain

_**Chapter two: Acid rain.**_

Well, scratch the idea of arriving in one day, it had been proven that he would not get even near the place as the sun rose to signal the start of a new day.

And to make him remember the fact that there was something very close to him.

John had been wandering the building for hours after he escaped the thing following him. Surprisingly he hadn't found anything, but sadly he also hadn't found anyone. He had to get in touch with reality, which meant that, alone, he would do nothing. It also meant that he needed to pay attention and see if the girl he was searching for was anywhere near here. It was probably impossible to find her so close to where he had started, but it was better than nothing.

What worried him were the steps. The loud, slow and very heavy steps that came very close more than once during the night, though they did disappear by miracle when he was about to drop. He was a nocturnal creature, but John had been using too much energy running up and down, as well as hiding, for many hours. It was only luck, and irony, that made him have the glasses he was using now, or the sun would've blinded him during his sleep.

It was hard for him to think of this like his old life, even if it helped him relax slightly. Though the urban environment was only a much larger sewer for him to hunt and survive on, it was also full of many places where more dangerous creatures could hide. The problem with this fact, as he took off from the hole he was hiding in, was that there would be a time limit for him to hide, and there was someone watching him, waiting for a moment to strike. He was more worried of his invisible follower than of the possible Xenomorphs, and their always present hissing when one moved.

The invisible monster following him was not his only problem though, remembering that they were her, all over the place, made him uneasy, but in fact, the Xenomorphs weren't the one that was getting him worried. As the light finally lit up to shine as bright as it could, even between the clouds full of rain, his skin began to itch. A lifetime in the darkness had made him accustomed only to very dim light, artificial light at best. Whatever mutagen had been given for him, as involuntary as it was, had made him adapt perfectly to a world of dark. Light had little place in there, at least one so bright.

He knew, however, that it would just sting him. His skin would not burn, but he would grow tired and the itch would be replaced by pain if he stayed too long under the sun. The only time he went for a whole day in the surface he had to learn of that hard fact by the worst means possible.

If he found danger under the sun, it could cost him his life if the adrenalin failed him.

All was not so bad though. While there were a lot of windows and holes in the building, he had to admit that a moment of sun went away fast when he got to a shadow. In a few minutes the intermittent sting of the light didn't make him so uncomfortable, as far as he didn't have to wait for more than a few seconds under it as he walked or jumped his way through the building, searching for a safe way to reach the roof, where he had found the next walkway.

It was simply a problem to reach it because most stairs had collapsed or were full of bones, a signal that there wasn't something good waiting for him. He even saw one of the large herbivore centipedes try to climb one of the marked stairs, only to find death as he was being ripped apart by something he wasn't fully able to discern thanks to it being a blur with how fast it moved.

Searching for another way proved, thus, what had taken most his time the night before. He had been able to go through the whole middle section of the building, but the last two floors had been simply teasing him. The three first ones, however, were full of hissing sounds and John thought that maybe some of the Xenomorphs capable of breeding had made a nest. That was one theory he wasn't really willing to prove right, so even if there was a way down there, he was not going to test his luck. It came to be one of the two only possible solutions however: stairs… or going through the many empty spaces that elevators had left behind.

For many others, the elevators would've left dark holes with a pair of cables, maybe four in total if John was lucky. However for John they were clear as a day, which was not good, as it was hard to miss the marks of claws and some acid burns, probably the way of these Xenomorphs of marking their paths.

Weighing his options, he had two bad choices to chose from, and if he stopped to think, the steps would soon return to startle him.

It had been like this at night and so it was in the morning. It took him until he was hungry, but he noticed when he emptied one of the cans to recover whatever energy he had lost simply by walking. When he heard the steps, heavy but meditated, he knew that whatever was there was taunting him and playing with him like if he was a mouse trapped by a cat. It would take him a few seconds to see the motion blurs, but by then he decided to change the vision of his glasses with a click to adjust it for heat vision, something he had only used a few times at first to get used to it.

The thing was HUGE, probably big enough to double John's size. It was literally a giant, so he had not seen something weird the other day; he had indeed been in front of a massive monster that was now getting closer. He could make a humanoid figure, even if the heat vision made it blurry, so either it was another experiment, or it was another kind of alien. It was NOT a Xenomorph, though, so he was clueless as to what to do.

So much of his life spent trying to learn about an enemy he was sure that he would fight, only to find one he knew nothing about. Maybe it was not ironic, but it made him feel stupid and very, very angry.

John had to leave behind his personal pride, as he had been staring at it for too long and the thing had advanced, obviously tired of waiting for his next move. It didn't come fast, though; it just walked calmly, being extremely deliberate on its steps, knowing how to make him nervous. All of it was like if the thing knew how to corner anything it wanted, only to deliver a swift blow if so it desired. So John did as he could, and ran.

It was something instinctive that he hadn't done since he was little, yet it was not fear, or so he kept telling himself. Fear for him had lost meaning a long time ago and death was not what could worry him, what did worry him was not achieving vengeance, giving reprisal to those that deserved it. Supposedly, he should only be feeling uneasy about what end he would have.

He feared not the death.

During his whole life he had lost most human feelings to an extent, he was not devoid of love, of care or anything else that would make him what the species was, but he had not been able to learn how to show them except for the time with his mother. For that reason the only thing he had learn was anger and hatred towards certain people, with some lessons on everything else by notes and books from the laboratory he so commonly visited. If anything had been taught by his self study, it was that he could be whatever he wanted, and he knew what he wanted to be.

If he was going to kill his father and be an outlaw, a rogue, so he would be. A good mercenary has to have no ties and no real feelings, only worrying about the goal and the payoff. His payoff in this one thing would be a chance at revenge.

That is why he was ok with doing what Jacob had asked him for, which is why he wanted to find survivors. He needed help to find and reach him, and then he would do things his way, alone as always. That there was something so close to him that he could hear its breath was not a problem. That he would get nervous under pressure when something tried to end his life just meant he wished to remain alive to end his only true objective.

If he had to go the dangerous way, so be it.

His resolution and fast paced thinking came because he had a limited space to run through, and the one behind him knew so. He had been herded to a rubble filled corridor with a half opened elevator gate. This elevator section was the one that had both of the elevators literally destroyed at the bottom floor, with the upper one full of remains of the last floor's wall and one of the rooms. He could climb until he reached the floor before the last, but he didn't know if there were Xenomorphs there or if the thing he had nearly on his back wouldn't strike him.

These were the last seconds of the chase however, and they were always exhilarating. Exhilarating was one thing though, the fact that he had basically a need for adrenaline, as he had grown to be used to regular kicks of the chemical compound being generated by his body in regular intervals. It only meant his life was hanging of a tread and he was drunk on the prospect of the end as much as he felt all but appreciation towards his own death until his father's own came to happen.

Being the prey of the one preyed upon didn't mean much for him, though. In these situations HERE is when things went good for an escape maneuver, to turn the tides of the battle and counterattack or, in most cases, when one of the two in this mad dash died. It was an act he had been so used to, that if he was to realize he had been scared to this point, now he would admittedly say he was calm.

Why? This reason:

Time freeze; the adrenaline pumped in much harder, heart didn't skip a beat even as slow as it seemed to go, the brain was about to fry thanks to how fast things were being processed. The muscles in his body gave such powerful and well synchronized movements that he felt he could do anything that required a nanosecond of coordination. He only needed and opening.

And like that, with a bright and well thought plan in a mere moment, he eyed his objective and saw how he was going to do it.

John turned as the door opened in front of him, the insides where cold, dark and uninviting, even more so than the sewers he had to inhabit until not so long ago. Maybe it was because he knew that it was not safe, maybe because it was his only route of escape, he was not sure, but he jumped and, as he did, he made sure to nearly scratch the top of the elevator's entrance. It was not a surprise when something jumped back at him, narrowly missing by maybe an inch of two, but it was even more obvious now that these now empty spaces of the house were death traps like many of the stairs.

And again, he had survived, just because he was not willing to die, or maybe simply by chance, but it had missed him. The thing didn't miss the monster that almost took his life and yellow acidic blood splattered all over the place as time came back to the regular flow, just as he hugged the cables of the elevator as if they were his most prized possession.

Not looking back, John climbed. He could hear the thing fighting against the Xenomorph. The alien had been different, a glance could tell him that it was not the same as other small breeds he had seen in the documents. Probably it was the first fully fledged mutant he had seen, it had been too quick, but he was not willing to stop and look back. He had little time, things were going to get worse and the one behind him was going to be done in no time.

He needed to advance, nothing mattered but reaching the first step towards his goal right now.

* * *

The hidden bunker was silent, eerie even. It had been supposed to have held ten thousand people, most of them in cryo-tubes, that will be granted, but it had been made to let three sub levels under the mall be full of life, should the surface become too dangerous. Twenty, if not thirty, of these were all over the city. They weren't enough for the whole population, but it had been thought that, if these were needed, more than a few wouldn't make it.

Practical, thought, was the meaning of the place: Few resources left for construction, and a grim disposition to accept that something bad was bound to happen, had made these places the most secure with ingenuity, spare parts, compound materials and the reasonable thought that there would be few left to use them.

For Val it was as normal as it could get. Val wasn't his name, but it had been given to him as a code when he had been taken into the militia so many years ago. He had no home, no father, no mother, and no friends, as much he had working colleagues, and all were dead. He didn't remember most his life before the militia, he had been… fifteen? Now he was twenty eight, if the doctors were right, and he had been trained to kill for the colony. However Val had his own survival first and the colony next, that is why the company that made the colony weren't calling the shots with him, even if they didn't know.

Weyland-Yutani, however, had a plan he needed to fulfill, so he was useful and he would be saved IF everything went ok.

When he was young Val had been met by creatures, native or not, near the forest. They had been poisonous, that had been expected, the effects, however, had been all but what they had thought as far as the document that had been given to him said when he recovered inside the medical quarters of the Militia HQ. As it seemed, he had crawled there as in a zombie like state, stung around fifty times by a quadruped mammal, very small in size, that had been gifted with a scorpion tail. They had a powerful neurotoxin, that fact he remembered very well since he had been marked for life thanks to it, and obviously it had affected his memory and his body, the second only for a few days in some cases, the first until this very day, and still lasting.

He had lost both lungs, one collapsed right when he had been stung; the other was in the verge when he was found. Now he had two synthetic organs breathing for him, which gave him a wheezing and mechanical voice, as also part of his digestive tract and muscle tissue had to be replaced, making him a cyborg that was roughly 15% percent machine. Probably it wasn't for that reason, but Val had a very serious no-nonsense tone and hardly ever laughed, besides, it hurt when he did so. Some called him a bastard, or said he had a stick so deep his ass that he couldn't even fucking sit, but he was simply in depth thought at any given time, always thinking of what to do next.

Being bald and looking much older than he was, Val had thought many times that the venom had wounded him much more than had been said. He looked like he was in his 40s, his face serious and even wrinkled here and there. His body was of normal build, yet supple and quite strong, however it had moments of weakness when he had been forcing it too much; something a healthy person would never suffer at his age. He was of normal height at one meter seventy something and had soulless brown eyes that told him, more than once a day, that he was not well.

Probably that is why he had accepted to work for Weyland-Yutani when he had the chance. Apparently the thing that nearly killed him had a slow effecting toxin. Once it was cleared, he would recuperate until he was 'rejuvenated' to his real age. But it usually took a long time, was painful, and, of course, costly. He had been offered to eradicate the eroding toxin if he did this one thing for them.

He had to ensure that one specific person, their 'human pet', came to the spaceport. If there were survivors along them, it would be a bonus for him and Weyland-Yutani would save face, as far as they didn't know of the truth in this place.

It supposed a problem. Jacob knew, and he HAD to keep him alive… for now.

That would be a problem for The Company whenever it came to have things shorted out. He knew that the things that had been made for the human, alongside unknown effects that he had suffered through mutation, were costly enough to fit a small army and a ship for them. Weyland-Yutani had paid a lot of money for the equipment he had, they also doubted they could replicate the effect of the mutagen anytime soon.

His weight was gold for Val, and Val needed said gold to survive.

Many, if not everyone, would call him selfish, but Val would hardly care. While he knew that he should feel bad, maybe pity of the man, he cared little. His objective had suffered quite an ill fate since he was young, but Val had lost half his actual life. It seemed that the native creatures used this venom to erase the memory of possible predators since they were not carnivore in nature. Until Val came in, no one knew what kind of effects it would take in a human. Since he was dying, and wanted to know about his past, the life of someone that had also suffered didn't strike him as more important than his own.

Eyeing his surroundings, he found that the doctor had decided to leave him alone in front of the computer. This section of the bunker was supposed to have brainiacs working day and night for a solution to whatever had forced them here, but the doctor had only used it to try and contact with Val's objective. On the other side of things, Val had used them to receive orders.

Finally happy, he opened the communications and the surveillance program that was attached to his objective's equipment.

"Here is Falcon" He spoke slowly and in a deadpan tone, not giving much emotion to his voice "Requesting update"

Static came first, looking around again, Val confirmed no one was there.

"Vulture here" The answer came with a feminine voice and a teasing grin that could be felt even if you couldn't see it "The objective remains the same: Receive information from the visual equipment and muscular data, alongside performance charts, from the artificial muscle"

"Roger that" Val touched the window with the surveillance program and started reading "Seems an adrenaline spike took place five to ten minutes ago. The augmentation to the brain functions stipulate augmented perception for thirty seconds. Muscular output elevated slightly over human standards. Possible temporal muscular damage in artificial muscle as well as more prominent damage through lower body muscle. Mutant genes regenerating tissue within the hour" He paused as he opened another application that showed a 3D model of John "Stress seems to be much higher than yesterday. There has been no test of acidic blood on the subject's skin, nor bites or other scrapes"

A brief silence was next, along a sigh as it finished.

"That is disappointing to hear" The woman on the other side seemed to mind nothing the obvious contempt in her voice "Has the subject detected any enemy to undergo Test Beta?"

Again, Val changed the charts for something else, a recording of yesterday night's events both inside the Weyland-Yutani HQ and on the roof. There were other highlighted moments within the residential structure he was in right now, including the one that forced his actual damage.

"Two different individuals" Val assured "A pure specimen, female by the visor's readings, was about to eliminate the objective within the HQ. He managed to escape nearly unscathed, by now the wound that he sustained should be healed and forgotten. The second one is a hybrid type alpha, model two, past three meters in height for that matter"

"So…" The woman chuckled "At least two of those Predators; a female and a human/yautja hybrid suffering gigantism? Not good enough to send reinforcements, but a good bonus if you can get samples"

It was not spoken, but that meant that he was supposed to check the objective for splatters of blood from the aliens. The visor that John had was developed thanks to masks stolen to the Yautja, though the blueprints from the technology had been incomplete, which was why it was very costly. Thanks to materials from the Predators, the artificial arm had also been made, which was much superior to that of a synthetic in nearly every single way.

The Company cared for these things, but if it came to the worst conclusion to this story, they could make more with enough time. What they were interested was to see their performance.

Of course, the worst meant he was not going to get what was promised to him.

"I am not 'paid' to get bonus, I am not paid at all" Val growled to the comm. "I will get you the man. That is all I was asked to do in exchange of the treatment. I won't accept a change in our deal"

"Now, hear me you little…"

"Shut up" Val spat with venom in his voice "I am not a pawn from Weyland-Yutani and I have half a brain unlike most of you. I know you can't access the logs I have and I have been able to secure them all within an account that will be transferred to Kraken when the ion storm passes. I will be the only one to open them, and since your precious test subject cannot store information in the devices you equipped, you need me" If he wasn't against it, he would've chuckled "All the equipment you installed on the man and you couldn't give him a recorder. All about making him a tool, not a utility, is going to cost you. Kind of sad isn't it?"

"Treacherous worm" The woman wasn't pleased "You better deliver"

"Since you lot will be doing your part first, hope that YOU can deliver" His voice, stoic, only managed to get a growl from the other side of the comm. "I have been asked to do this in a mercenary way, Vulture, so I will have a mercenary mentality. No feelings, no second thoughts, just the payment and then the deliver will be made"

"The Company will not be pleased"

"See if I care"

With that he hung up the conversation. The good thing about Kraken was that the company was an expert at information more than anything, technology and terraforming were only side projects, which is why they hadn't been as prepared for an outbreak they had NOT expected. To be truthful, he had been told by his superiors that they expected Weyland-Yutani to do something, only that a bug infestation hadn't been the prime subject for this all.

It was because of this affinity with secrecy that the high level military personnel, the militia of this colony, could get private archives and a red of invisible satellites outside the colony to send the information. If The Company had found the satellites, he would be screwed, but since the militia was a voluntary task force independent from the Colonial Marines (That, basically, were owned by Weyland-Yutani even if they didn't want to admit it), they had access to the private net, at least he and a few others. Thanks to this he had the upper hand with The Company, but only if he didn't disappear or get demoted, otherwise the information would be made public to those with power within Kraken.

THEN he would be fucked, royally.

Val had no delusions of being able to hide it of course, after all Kraken was all into the information, wasn't it? For that he made measures to hide the real information behind daily reports about what was happening and, sad to say, he had a lot to write both because he had to cover up and because it was his duty to fill informs of who had died, family charts and all the unsavory stuff that you would prefer not to know about those that had died, for thanks to that they weren't statistics anymore. The deaths of a lot of people under his care were the only things that he knew would make the company interested, but strangely he felt bad for such failures. Probably because all those that died had families and histories, dreams to live for… He, however, had nothing.

Maybe he was being selfish, MAYBE, but he had failed so many and had stayed alive instead. The less he could do was make sure to keep on living, maybe in the future he could be of use to someone and undo all the wrong he was going to do by doing something good.

It pained him to do so, but he had to chuckle. It seemed he had some conscience after all.

* * *

Jacob left his spying soon enough after Val started writing. He had known for long enough about what he was going to do, but was conflicted knowing that he had to simply because, otherwise, he was going to die. He had been the one to treat Val when he first came, and he was the one to find about the decaying effect that the venom had in a human body. Tests on isolated cells and blood samples had been incomplete every time they tried to discover about it. Now to think that the man in light blue armor behind that door was going to sell his soul because he had no other way of keep living… made him sad, but not enough to forgive outright.

The old man had been sterile all his life, yet, even as sad as it was, taking care of Val when he first came and, before that, helping John from afar, had made him feel as close to being a parent as he could, even if in this case it was as fucked up as it could get.

He had what he could call a third family too, but Zack and Jessica weren't… well, he was going to say they weren't normal like the other two, but between someone with whipped memory and a mutant, he was hardly surprised to see a combat synthetic that wanted to be human, and a younger synthetic model made to be the daughter of one of the few rich assholes from Weyland-Yutani that wanted to stay within the colony.

Ironic how one of the big ones would suffer an 'accident' on the first days of the colony, but Jacob didn't care much. Kraken knew that Bartolommeo Neumann had been thinking of getting away from The Company for a time, his superiors had asked him to talk with the old fart when he arrived, but it seemed that Weyland-Yutani didn't like him much more than Kraken did. It was a shame, he was a big blabber mouth, disliked by nearly everyone that knew him, but he knew a lot of things about Weyland-Yutani that would've helped Kraken. Now he was dead and he left two synthetics to be recycled, if not for the good doctor.

"Aaah, doctor, I was waiting for you"

Jacob blinked; it seemed he had been walked through the bunker until he had arrived at one of the dining halls. As the rest of the bunker it was solid looking, the mix of rocks and artificial components made it look naturally made within the ground, giving it a sturdy and very rustic look, but it made sure that the acid of the creatures couldn't pass and the claws couldn't harm it.

Supposedly.

It was this place where Zack, a combat synthetic, as illegal as it could get, passed his time. He had been made as the bodyguard of Bartolommeo, but he had been forced to wait an extra thirty minutes within the ship as his owner was 'accidentally killed' by a driver that was never seen again after the incident.

With a green Mohawk for hair, stoic but very gentle factions, cybernetic blue eyes and an overall very strong figure. Zack had been made to resemble a tug, but since Bartolommeo had been always a very asinine and distrustful man, he had tinkered with his programming, giving him the character of a very helpful and friendly man… that could break you in two, literally, and bate in your blood if you pissed him off, but he still was a very nice person to know. Probably the old fart fucked with something he shouldn't have, because Zack became quite independent and correcting the error would wipe the unit clean of memory, orders and, of course, the ownership that Bartolommeo would have to re-forge paying quite a tool.

Luckily for the colony, when his owner was killed, Zack simply mourned his loss as he would do a family member, instead of flipping a switch and try to kill everyone suspected of being his murdered before going away and turning rogue. Probably it was thanks to Jessica, his 'little sister', a model made to be compatible with the combat synthetic in the way of hacking systems with extreme skill.

Zack, of course, looked nothing like his 'sister' and he had asked her to live a life as a normal girl of her supposed age (fifteen), while he joined the militia undercover, only known to the leader, which technically made Zack a civilian except in these situations. Unlike in most places, Zack had been treated like a normal person and had been assigned his own pulse rifle and blue armor and helmet. Kraken didn't very much mind differences, that was Weiland-Yutani's motto, though, as well as most of those that kissed The Company's ass, the rest of the world wasn't such an asshole, usually.

Jacob finally shook his head and eyed the smiling android "What do you need, Zack?"

"I still have a connection to my sis, or I did a moment ago" He said very slowly "She has gone further away. I think she is hiding from something… With what power she has been able to find, she has activated some motion sensors. It seems three humans are just one block away from her"

"Hmmm…" Jacob took a seat in front of Zack, mulling over what could be "Is she close to The Company HQ?" He received a nod "Then, most probably, one will be John… but I do not know about the other two. How many Xenomorphs can she pick through the sensors?"

"She only managed to send me that information before the power was cut off" Zack sighed as he looked down, obviously worried. He had quite a few upgrades that allowed him a great deal of human emotions "I would say, thanks to all the mixed info in the message, that there should be sixty, maybe eighty. Most the creatures in this moon spawn very fast and grow nearly as fast, the aliens will have no shortage of food, and even a fight on their hands to try and multiply. This place is dangerous outside the city"

"And thank whoever made these things that they fought between each other to get to the canyon and make a hive" The doctor sounded worried as he looked down "I doubt there are more than five hundred, maybe a thousand, of us left. We were so many three months ago, now most of our former friends are either food or spawn for those things"

"Relax, doctor" Zack let his worry pass for a moment as he patted at his friend "But I wonder… why go to the canyon instead of making a hive here?"

"Programmed in the normal breed's subconscious I suppose" The doctor sighed as he rubbed his eyes "Being a species capable of communicate mentally between them, and even between humans that have a specific genome developed within their DNA after we took off to space. Xenomorphs are told by their queen what to do even at long range, so I suppose a very smart queen would like to get into a hard to reach area, and since the spaceport was overrun by a few coexisting variants that can breed..." Jacob let it linger there, but Zack knew what he meant by the implied danger to everything, including the own Xenomorphs "It is not unlimited range of course, but it can go very far. I don't doubt the ones that modified the queen that has spawned all this madness made her desire the safest place to live in, which would probably pass into any offspring of hers"

"You sure they didn't do it because some weird programming in them to test the strength of this breed?" Jacob sent the synthetic a very cold stare "Ok! I know they have tested that enough, in fact I doubt they give a crap about the Xenomorphs anymore after they have seen what they could do… But doesn't it seem very weird to you?"

"No, no it isn't" Jacob took his glasses from one of the pockets in his coat and sighed, not really looking forward to rummaging through the notes to see if he could find data useful to get out of here, not after remembering what he found last time and he was going to tell Zack "As far as I know after I researched the last batch of information gleamed after the outbreak, the woman that spawned the queen was, in truth, simply fused with the facehugger, as at least one hundred people have been" The synthetic would not refrain a look of pity at that, luckily he wasn't in danger of such an end "The mutant genome in the Xenomorph species acts as the best parasite taking only what is useful for the new creature. Altering a very volatile thing like that to literally absorb the whole host is not so hard, only dangerous, it also gives both the alien and the host's intelligence merged into one" He cleaned the glasses as he took a very tired breath "My guess is that the woman, like those that remained sane after the merging, could not face the world with what she had been forced to do. Any other merged specimen psychically capable acted very much as they did when they weren't Xenomorphs, which I suppose is a total failure on this project on Weyland-Yutani's side. However, the queen is programmed to reproduce, and a female being the host would mean that the instinct would override sanity and nearly anything else" The doctor seemed to think hard on something, but he only said "I suppose she was forced to lay eggs as soon as possible and she felt she was a monster to the world after what she did, which would explain the ferocity with which she led those that had turned insane and how hard she protected those that were still grasping reality"

"But… you aren't sure" Zack interrupted the doctor "I can see you aren't sure of what you are saying"

"Of course I am not sure" Jacob nearly spat as he looked around. At least that double-crosser wasn't around and, putting the glasses on to turn the X-Ray function online, he could see that Val hadn't moved from his position "In fact I have run tests with the information I could gleam from the satellites. The mutant genome hasn't acted since the first batch came in, so that means the fusion with a human or any other creature probably makes the actual version dissolve, as the complex DNA mixture creates a non pure Xenomorph by default, which only grows worse if you mix it up with a code as complex as a human. The things near here, in the new hive, could be anything from normal, scared people in a body they don't know, or killers with psychotic, animalistic needs"

Zack shuddered at such a cold explanation, but he had been skeptic at one thing the doctor said "We are still finding new species every so often. The militia can't get here, but they sure as hell give us information" Zack pointed out to part of the notes Jacob would have to rummage through "How can you say that the mutant gene isn't acting up?"

"Because" And with that, Jacob showed a very firm face with a serious tone to accompany the gravity of the statement "There is, at least, another queen, one that was premade to fit in all this chaos. The girl that got turned into another queen was only a mishap and she is in hiding not only from the world, but for her new 'mother'. Any new mutation comes from this area"

From his coat, the doctor took a picture that had been made by the same satellites that were being used by Val to have The Company by the balls… for now. The huge city was shown, partially destroyed, but also the far away spaceport, which was highlighted and…

"It is full of the creep that t he Xenomorphs make" Zack sighed as he looked over it, losing a lot of the hope that he had been hoarding through this whole mess "Except the section used for the ships to land… This is the biggest and worst concealed trap I have ever seen"

"Not a trap" Jacob corrected, much to Zack's surprise "The outbreak started in the spaceport thanks to a ship from our own company, a ship that came from the colony of Meridolous. It was an automated ship that did runs of one year travels between the colony and that planet, you should known it as the Emmelion" Zack nodded, remembering a few of runs with cargo he had asked for "Signs showed pirate attack, including a big ass hole in the side from where part of said 'pirate' vessel had collided. The authorities will say that the pirates were trying to escape from a Xenomorph infestation and got the cargo of beasts, as well as the pirate party, to act as a catalyst for the situation we are in" The doctor sighed as he rubbed his forehead, quite angry "We will have to let the story stick, otherwise The Company will want to fuck us up, though they will probably want to silence me almost for sure. However…" Jacob lifted a hand to stop Zack "That will be for latter. What I wanted to say with all this is that it is perfectly normal for the original infection to have stayed within the Spaceport from Weyland-Yutani. They had offered the coordinates as an emergency site for any ships to land, as it is isolated away from the city. It still works because the landing section has extensive security measures and enough energy stored for years, out of The Company's own paycheck even" Taking a data pad from another pocket, Jacob threw it at Zack as he prepped a video "Footage shows the initial and NORMAL aliens attacking and bypassing the defenses, but they weren't unable to destroy them, so that area is basically safe. You could say The Company 'did all it could'"

Zack didn't waste time putting it own. As it was obvious, Colonial Marines were killed or dragged away. A lot of weaponry was placed and turned out to hurt quite a lot of Xenos, but not enough to even stop half of them, much less a few Praetorians and the Queen, which looked quite… weird for a lack of a better term.

"They made sure to do their best looking innocent, right?" Zack let the video end before putting the pad down.

Jacob gave a grim look as he nodded "They have their asses covered, only a handful of us know what happened for real, and I am sure by the end of this, we will be counted with the fingers of a single hand"

"The ship in the dock" Zack suddenly reran a bit of the video in his mind. Wanting to be sure that his optical imput had been precise; he took the pad up and looked back at the video, rewinding it to look at a massive cargo ship "Can we make it work so we can leave this place?" The hole could be seen, it was not that bad… but it would take at least a few hours to patch enough of the remainder of the pirate ship to make it safe.

"Most probably it has been hacked" Jacob said casually as he took his glasses back. Val was not going to get close it seemed "Weyland-Yutani has arranged everything. It seems they are really confident in thinking only John will reach the ship and no one will be there to help him run the thing. I doubt that he would be able to do much more than turn the auto pilot back online and then get to the cryogenic module that is kept for the animal caretakers or passengers"

"If we make it…" Zack looked again at the ship, probably the size of three to four apartment complexes, and that was only in length. The thing could fit a small village or two inside "How many persons could fit in?"

"Two, three hundred" Jacob could see Zack's disappointment in his face "It was meant for transport of tons of cargo, not for passengers. The cryogenic modules were put there in case this colony needed some experts on something transferred from the other planet. They probably were powered down when the alarm went off, much like the animal section where the creatures had been kept in stasis. We would need to FIRST power them back up and see if they are all still working, so we could be talking about ten to fifty persons in the worst case, maybe even only ONE"

Understanding the grim implications of what Jacob was trying to tell him. Zack decided it was time for some more maintenance for his gun. It made him feel at ease and he would need the distraction after the last question he had for the doctor.

"Have you told John all of this?"

Zack wasn't surprised when the doctor got up and walked away. Jacob had told the young man all he needed to know. Even if it killed everyone else, Jacob would make sure The Company didn't get John. Even his own life was meaningless to him in comparison with giving them the middle finger.

* * *

The day of twenty one hours was going to bring night again. Thanks to the humidity and the orbit of the gas giant, days were always separated in twelve hours of daylight and nineteen hours of night, give or take up to one hour depending on the season. With them being only a resemblance to the seasons of Earth, most the time it meant more or less rain, some years it even snowed. For that reason 'spring' was a period of one year and a half, 'summer' was the time when the old foliage and the few forest nearly burned up thanks to a month or two with lack of water and the bright sun scorching the land, 'autumn' had the remainder of the plants to wither and die for another year, and rarely there would be around six months worth of extreme cold before the cycle went into reset.

Being spring, and finally having achieved the impossible finding a stair towards the last floor, John welcomed the rain as everything started to face into blackness when he looked over his glasses.

It had been a few hours searching, but luckily he hadn't had to face that big asshole again. After the first Xeno died, a lot more came in on the thing's position; John could hear them as he hid near the elevator shaft. Bloodshed had ensued, and the sounds of it were sickening even to him. Half of the battle had been the ripping of flesh echoing through the broken construction would be stuff of nightmares for most people. What unlevered him was, in truth, something more mundane, and something that anyone would do as they won a battle against the odds: Cry to the heavens in fucking defiance while bating in glory.

The fucker was not going to stay down, was he?

Yet, surprises await the unwary, and John had seen the alien escape as it jumped to another building, not far away. It had been a jump that tore away part of both buildings, but it showed that there were no more Xenomorphs nearby. This also meant that the thing was hurt, as the bright green blood droplets all over the area could show. For a time, John would be safe.

That time had been used in the search of the stairs and, while he was confident that probably thirty or so of the mutants had been killed by the other alien, there were still hisses here and there, as well as suspicious sounds that made him look back from time to time, his senses on the search for danger. There had been many collapsed sections in this floor, and a lot of the stairs were destroyed, he had found three at first, but they had the marks that had warned him from the others in the previous floors, so he was not going to prod his luck again, begging for a bone.

It turned out that there was a safe passage to the upper level, but it probably was a place to herd the most intelligent prey. There were slight marks, maybe a bit of acid here and there, not enough to look off from the rest of the building to those that were just smart enough to get here without being killed.

But the smell of fresh blood did give away the truth.

Being only slightly used to track through scent, John was happily rewarded with rough information he could gleam after so long depending on his nose not trailing down the wrong path during his life in the sewers. Thanks to the times he had been hurt and the easily recognizable scent of the blood, he could swear that someone had been here around eight to twelve hours ago, probably while he was nearly literally in coma as he slept.

Outside of that, he could only find the smell stronger as he got up the stairs, but there was no corpse to be found and much less any Xenomorph. That only meant they were not RIGHT here, which potentially meant he would find them on the vastly destroyed upper floor sooner or later.

Most walls had caved in; a lot of the rooms were connected together and easy to see through even from his starting position. It was like a small wasteland in here, including remains of pretty, both human or animal, and other discarded corpses. This was what he would find at ground level, in the bare streets, but he was not sure how to proceed in that situation, much less in an enclosure where the danger could come from any direction at any given time. Even the sound was betraying him as the hissing echoed even behind him where there was not even a wall as there was only a hole to the outside.

Wait… his back was open to the outside.

He turned fast, however the thing was faster. It had been a marvelous jump from a predator, that, he would concede, but also it had been disastrous for him as he felt the weight of the creature pinning him down and breaking one of his ribs with a loud crack.

John let a scream rip from his throat as he spat a bit of blood on the head of his assailant. The creature shrieked and kicked him away, forcing him in a course of impact towards the closest wall, which caved in as if it was a cushion made of dust. The integrity of this place was so screwed that a fatal hit had been transformed into little more than a very painful impact to the stomach.

Of course, he had to thank his backpack and the lot of food that probably had been smashed, including, if all went wrong, the motion tracker and the shotgun.

Getting up, coughing a bit of blood that he soon saw as a greenish red glob that ate at the stone that was the floor, John had to smirk, knowing that a bit of this fucking situation was working to his favor. As he looked up, all happiness went out of the window when five creatures decided it was time to cut the crap.

Designed with a rigged dome head, a large spike at the end and two backward shaped tubes that tried to resemble horns, the slightly bigger than a human Xenomorphs had a slightly larger head than the proportions would sagest. However as two small tentacles like protrusions snapped from the sides of their cranium, the size did seem to fit both for use within the weight they could support and for danger they would amount.

With the dome of a black color up to the upper lip of the creature and through the face at that level, the rest of the skin had a dark blue hue except on the black as night claws and the joints of the arms, legs or even the protruding ribs of the creatures. In complexion they were muscular, even if they had the organic/cybernetic appearance of the Xenomorphs. They were probably human like, but much stronger, with also two tails at the end instead of one, both of them exuding drips of a white something that John knew he should never even touch.

The bigger one, that had been the one to attack him, had a much larger dome, the tentacles at the sides of the head in that one were much more defined and showed a pair of blade like appendages at the end. It had three large scars like marks on the surface of the dome head with a bright blue coloring; the parts of his body that weren't black were also colored with a mix of blue and green. It could be, probably, considered an alpha of whatever these things were.

A hiss latter, they showed the little detail of having two mouths, flexible at that, so he was outmaneuvered and outnumbered.

But not outgunned!

*BANG! BANG!*

He hadn't even to think; two shots came flying from his pistol as he lifted his hand. There was no way he could run with a wound on his chest, not until it healed anyway, and since after the operation he had noticed his regeneration had speed up like crazy, he was sure that he had to survive until morning.

Only until morning.

Luck, however, was a bitch, and his aim was not the best, but he managed to hit the leader of the pack on the side of the mouth, ripping through one of its secondary mouths, grazing its dome and lodging itself on its left arm. The creature shrieked like if it was mad, then jumped through the ceiling, literally destroying part of the upper level and caving a section of the ground, throwing two of the Xenomorphs down a level.

The other two didn't seem to mind. The first one launched itself at John, but he quickly put three rounds on the monster's head as it prepared to attack, as it flew into the air and as it crashed down when he sidestepped. With a shriek of anger, the other one got close before John could do much. It took two shots to the chest, but it then rammed on John's own already mangled front, taking his breath as he was held by the throat by the creature. IT miscalculated, though, and they crashed into another wall, this time bringing down part of the roof and a piece of iron that crushed the creature's skull, letting the acidic blood smear on John's chest and legs.

It burned like hell, for a few seconds. It was the most excruciating pain he had felt since the last days of the infection not long ago, at least in his mind, so he was rightfully angry as another of the Xenos made its way to him, which prompted two bullets right into its skull, finally emptying the clip as the wounded creature stumbled to him. John ended the bug with a blow to the head, the pistol's heavy construction cracking the skull and splitting the sensitive brain inside, making the creature collapse, twitching.

When it came to the last one, though, John was fucked.

He had been angered and he was only seeing red. The alien, though, had seen its companions die, and it was up for making John miserable before killing him. The others had just rushed in, they were young and not still strong enough, this one was more mature and now had a thing to pick with the human.

Not even bothering to reload, John rushed forward, only to be met by the creature's tentacles and tails at the same time. It was not a hard dodge as he was just about the maximum length of the monster's reach, but he got too close for comfort as one of the tentacle blades cut through his cheek. The blood spilled ever so slightly on the blade, so the tip burned away and the rest was dulled, making the Xenomorph hiss at John before it spitted with both secondary mouths.

Hitting him square in the throat, he knew that, had it been anyone else, their heads would fall right there as their neck melted. For him, though, it was an abrasive pain that ate at his exposed neck and upper chest, making him cry in rage as the creature threw forward one of its tails, only to be caught by the young man's hands and then tossed around, slamming in nearby walls, remains of furnace and even the metal that had impaled one of the aliens.

The display of force, though, only made his pain worse as part of his skin gave in and the acid went through his throat. It wouldn't kill him, hopefully, but so much movement had forced every muscle to the point where he had been crying out in rage and panting for air. Now his whole body hurt and he could only let go of the alien as he grabbed his throat, shortly going on his knees as he frantically tried to get the backpack out of his back to pick a water bottle and down as much as he could down his harmed neck, not even bothering to drink it.

Pained and disoriented, the alien recovered faster than the human. It could smell how fast its enemy's body was regenerating. The first burns were already healed, and the small hole in his throat, which included the burns made inside by the acid, was dwindling very fast, soon it would turn into nothing. In contrast, his body mass was obviously getting smaller and his heat was rising. Forcing him a bit more would kill him one way or another.

Hissing like it was mad, the Xeno charged forward, but ended up falling to the ground as one of its tails was pinned down against a wall, a big chunk of iron having melted it against the ground as the whole thing dissolved on itself.

Being resistant to high temperatures and more so to its own acidic blood, there was no pain, but it would not move while being trapped. The self sacrifice to bring this prey down would be little to pay, so with a forceful yank, the Xenomorph tore its own tail, half of it spilling acid all over the place as it made a mad dash towards its enemy, tentacles and the other tail reaching for the kill.

Instead, it found itself in front of an angry scowl as John turned with a nasty mark in his throat that would probably never heal and took the creature's outstretched arm.

It seemed neither was thinking it all would end like this, but John pushed it through: With his left hand he tore away the arm of the Xenomorph, using all the strength that his artificial muscles could muster. With the other he graved his throat and lifted him up, the muscles in his body aching and yelling as he led the heavy creature in an arch as it screeched in pain, flailing about and showering with its blood all around the place. It all ended as John threw the thing away, crushing a weak wall that was on the edge of the floor, marking the monster's end as it fell down to the ground bellow.

John hadn't even registered what he had done, he just was glad that he hadn't been killed. His instincts had kicked up a gear and he had been so relieved to see the creature flying to its death that he hadn't even noticed the burns in his back and his head, as well as his arms, as the acid fell on him. It didn't even cut down his clothing, which seemed to be nearly intact except for some cuts, but those cuts let the acid get into his skin and, little by little, John could feel how his body was consumed.

Once he registered everything, he went back to his backpack and rummaged through it. Interestingly, nothing was broken, but a lot of the food cans were bent and probable had been compromised. The water bottles were fine and the shotgun and the motion detector was seemingly unscathed, though both of them seemed to need a tweak or two as some parts were slightly bent.

He basically thought 'Fuck it' for now and took one a pair of the cans, his hunger rising beyond what he had ever felt. After he downed the food he felt himself yet again, though he felt as if his head had been filled with air all of sudden.

If it hadn't been for the groan he heard coming not from far away, John would've stumbled and then fell down on his ass, not to get up again until he had some sleep. Survival instinct, still kicking in, made him pick everything he had very fast and smash another clip into his pistol as he went to check on what had been that sound. It would come as a surprise, but no one that he cared about all that much, mostly because he had little time before, and he knew it, he collapsed.

There was a young girl on the wall, cocooned right next to a man.

The man was ravaged: His face had been caved in not long ago; his highlighted senses could tell him it was extremely fresh, but not how much. He had been much larger than John, probably two meters, but something had eaten one of his legs, his innards and also part of his throat, which probably meant his face, had not been the result of a fight… He also had his arms covered in heavy burns and, near his corpse, a pair of bags lied. One of them had the name 'Raymond' and the other 'Marino'. There were no second names that he could see, but the outline of ammo, food and also a pulse rifle a few meters away, near a blood smear in a decrepit wall.

The girl, probably 'Marino', was shorter than he was, probably slightly younger, had jet black hair and looked like she had a sheltered life with how 'perfect' the woman looked. A slight scratch on her right cheek was all that had been taken from that angelic like face, modest chest, slim build and obvious pricey clothes of times past, as they were now dirty, smeared with residue and tattered in more than one place even if they still stayed as regal as they could.

Seeing nothing else in the room, John took the cocoon apart and freed the girl with enough ease, leaving her in a nearby spot that was clean enough. Afterwards he took the corpse and pulled it away into an adjacent room. Tomorrow he would need answers, and probably some help. The least he could do to get the girl's help was to be as polite as possible. So with that done, he got out of the room… and fell to the ground, snoring.

* * *

Groaning in annoyance, pain and anger, Kah refrained from going there and pat the young human in the back for how he got rid of him as an assailant and his battle, but he had to, at least, admit the kid had done a good job.

Falling asleep though? That took points.

Still, he was pissed at everything after a huge amount of the juvenile creatures the human had faced, had attacked him. The design was called 'Twipers', thanks to the Twirl Tail, the common denomination of a local mammal the size of a small dog that lived in the plains inside burrows. It seemed that the genetic altered Facehuggers that had been left around had infected many clans of the poor and elusive creatures, creating the abomination that had attacked both of them.

Still, Kah had to give it to the kid: He knew how to get out of a fight even when fighting. It was only pure luck that the female of the species of the Twirl Tail was a very cowardly being, only powerful as a poser. The males, on the other hand, had almost killed him. The experiments done to him had been able to save his ass, but the young Yautja knew that things weren't going to be so easy when he woke up. For what he knew, the mutagen would absorb as much of him as it would need to repair all the damage, so by morning he would have a huge migraine.

'Better than to be dead' He thought as he looked to his left arm and leg, where the acid had gotten between the armor plates and had hurt his skin thanks to the sheer amount that had dripped on him 'And I still have to make repairs and heal this… I'll watch over him in the meantime'

Making sure that things went according to how the Matriarch had ordered would not be easy, but John, as he deserved enough as to be addressed by name at least after what he had done, had the potential to put up with anything, even if with a little help. However survivors like the one on the other side of that half crumbled door would make things very, very hard. He could recognize the scent of someone that hadn't seen real combat, or that had wet him/herself in the face of danger.

Whatever his reasoning, Kah would have let her behind. He was compassionate, yes, but in this situation he had to think of what was better for the objective that had been given to him, to all the hunters in this vast expanse of rock and metal that was Troptomos Colony. If things went bad…

*Hisss…*

*Thud…*

By instinct he took the blades out of his wristband and looked around, yet there was no enemy. The hissing came back though, this time clearly from outside. There was some kind of conversation, vocal so to speak, between two of the Kainde Amedha. By the high pitched tone, they were two of the mutants that he had faced, as well as John, not too long ago.

A powerful jump latter, that only served to worsen his state even if he would not even flinch, served to scare the two creatures away, far too fast for him to pursue, still they wouldn't come back anytime soon. The problem was that they were the creature that John had thrown out of the building not a moment ago, and as wounded as it was, the thing was fast and looked healty as it looked back to him. The other was the female, so they probably would be back in a few days to found another nest.

It was not bad, he didn't have to care, and he didn't, John would move away soon enough and this place would not be a problem. However he had a bad feeling about this.

Turning the scanner of his mask to trace the remains of pheromones or electromagnetic signals from the Xenomorphs, Kah looked around, only to notice a big hole on the roof, just where John had freed the girl from the cocoon. A piercing shriek that lasted a second told him all he needed, and so Kah went to inspect what he thought would be a grisly scene.

And, indeed, it was.

A Facehugger, of blue like coloration, had embraced the poor woman's face. Kah felt sorry, this time for real, but he still felt like most Yautja when he thought that it was survival of the fittest. Probably the creatures had hoped for the room to have John, but it had not been as they expected. The egg was not something they could make anyway, so they had probably stolen it to just backstab the human. Clever little bugs…

No matter though, the woman could probably last until someone could do something for her, if she told about this to John, or…

'Something is… not right' Kah had looked back to see if the mutants were around, but they had indeed gotten out of sight, still something felt like it was off 'What is it? What is it? I am never wrong with this!'

True to his training as a medic, he could practically 'sense' when something was life threatening or, sometimes worse, a permanent change for someone. In most the cases of the second circumstance, if they weren't treated, they usually took the one that he was scanning or inspecting with his bare eyes (There were things far too obvious, as sad as it was) to even go crazy.

Looking down, he nearly threw his mask in rage. This would give more problems than it was worth.

The young woman's Facehugger was MELTING on her face. The process was, as far as he had read, as simple as to let the creature insert the proboscis inside like a normal parasite of their kind, but instead of inserting an embryo, the Facehugger would insert DNA right inside the host's body after melting, very slowly, the walls of the throat to get to the spinal cord, then the proboscis would melt against it and a mutant compound would spread, slowly changing the whole host's body and DNA to that of the Xenomorph.

In practice it meant that, over the course of four to twelve hours, the body would slowly change shape, cells would die and the remains used to power the changes to the new body, the brain would slowly gain much more mass, along the cranium, and even the surroundings would melt thanks to the acidic sweat so the victim would absorb the remains to power transformation. It was an outright painful process, as the mind kept on running, so the woman would end up in a traumatic and probably catatonic state when she 'woke up' from the trance. Most probably, as the tail was one of the first things to dissolve from the Facehugger, she would be also unable to talk anymore, though she would be able to use her mind to talk to humans, even if they weren't gifted, thanks to the more 'human' buildup of her mind.

Resume: This was NOT GOOD.

However she had a chance to keep on living and she was in a helpless state. Unlike a normal victim, she could not succumb like other hosts, yet she could turn insane. It would be outright against the honor code of the Yautja to kill her, not now at least. If she 'woke up' without an animal for a mind, she would be spared, if not…

Kah would just remain there, the rain would help him treating his wounds and disinfecting. He would have time for repairs latter.


	3. Veil

_**Chapter 3: Veil.**_

Elvira Redhand, of the Redhand family, named so not by the last name like most, but from their heritage as pirates, was waiting quite impatiently. In story her family was not important, in fact her family had been in the best places, at the best times and, most often than not, this meant politics or owners of many of the best business. Changing names, background and so on… It was not hard to imagine why Weyland-Yutani had been interested in one of them, with the one condition she asked of hiding her daughter to the world, so as to keep on with tradition.

The 'little' girl was twenty one, she was nearly the age at which they took off to have their own lives, or they killed their parents. Traditions can be such bitches when you are only forty six and enjoying life…

However, to keep on living this little talk would have to be fast, accurate and to the point. She knew that the one that would be attending with her was not someone that cared for the survival of anyone, in fact his objective was all but survival, including his own. As a Slayer (definition given by humans), his only motive was warfare, no sense or motivation needed, yet he was still sane enough to know good opportunities to grant bigger battles and even less chances at survival of all parties involved.

The Company was always good at delivering such promises to those that wanted them, Elvira knew it very well.

Still, idling in the steel chair, in front of the table of the same alloy and also the last bit of furnishing of this black and nearly unlit room, which was another chair, made her uneasy (Mostly because she had asked only for her chair, anything else could be used as a weapon). She had already a hard conversation that had followed 'Falcon' and his defiance, since her boss was not pleased, but still happy that the puppet had the balls to go along with everything and even threaten them. It meant that the young man would do exactly as had been told; they only needed to spend some money on keeping him in line. All in all, it was a small price to pay, but she had been told to be more efficient.

With her supple build at one meter seventy seven, her ample chest, beautiful face, long white hair that resembles silver and those green eyes, she would be able to win over anyone in normal circumstances, which would mean usually less work and more money, even if sometimes she would have to spend hours 'after work'. Still, in her red dress with the same color for her heels, Elvira, also known as 'Vulture' by her coworkers, had no luck with those that really knew what was going on around here. She had to work like everyone else, even being near the top as she was, both because how good she was as a spy, as an assassin and, in fact, how good she was as a people's person and a manager.

Having diverse education pays off, not only in skills but also in how to talk nearly any language known to man at this age.

"Cold, dark, simple… it feels good"

And it would come in handy now that her guest was here. He could not be seen, but the sound of the chair moving as only Elvira was under the light was enough to tell her that things had started. She had limited time to not get killed now.

"My superiors weren't sure you would come" The woman, with her usual silky voice, did her best to emulate the guttural and unappealing sounds that his species did to talk "I am surprised myself, you took long enough to get away from the edge of the room…"

"Perceptive, aren't we?" A monstrous chuckling, not able to be described in any other way, came from the other side of the table "I was promised carnage, by you no less. You should be less wary of me coming here, indeed, you should be wary of me leaving without blowing this up"

"I do believe you would probably not care if you had to blow this up with your life on the line for it" Elvira nodded as he eyed at the darkness with obvious discomfort. She could probably take on the thing, but for a few minutes, wining was nearly out of the question "But I am more confident on remaining alive, since you'd want to see what we have to offer first, an offer that would only be fulfilled if no one is 'MIA' after your visit"

The woman took a hand to her ample cleavage, knowing that this one was a beast in so many senses that some kind of show on her part would probably guarantee her survival, even if she would feel shore for a long while in the extreme case that he would be interested in such bargain. Unlike most people of Weyland-Yutani, she had no qualms on doing that if she had to survive, however her actions had a meaning as she took a very small datapad from between her breasts, one that was hidden both because it was very advanced (as she showed once she activated it and a big holographic screen took place a few centimeters away from the small machine) and because it had very sensible information.

Such information meant Xenomorphs, many variations that most people didn't know about, such as the Slasher, the Carrier, the Crusher, Smasher, Razor Claws, Arachnoid, Chrysalis… They had used those strands of the Xenomorphs as weapons before, it had been costly in every sense, but they were effective. Giving someone like this thing such a weapon only meant he would be much busier and happy, but he would not die because of them.

As he extended a clawed hand with extreme pale skin on the underside of the arm, and sickly grey, ash like coloration, on the upper, one would understand that no, a Predator would not be killed by the prey he knew how to hunt.

"I do expect maximum performance from something _you_ made" The monster on the other side growled as he took the datapad and let it far away enough so she wouldn't see him "Such a special company should always deliver what has been promised"

"You expect us to lie when we would want this to indeed kill you?" Elvira chuckled wholeheartedly, she would hardly mind if this thing died right now, but she would much prefer him getting the job done first "Sincerity with you is the only thing we need, that, and that you die after you get our pet project back"

A loud rumble like a huge cat, much like a lion would do, echoed within the room. For some reason the idea of getting killed off doing the dirty job of Weyland-Yutani had attracted this Yautja, more so when they had offered danger after danger. They hadn't had any other choice though, or at least Elvira hadn't.

She had been trying to find a fast way to the colony once Falcon decided to be more assertive over the deal. The trip had been interrupted by the Yautja, whom proceeded to kill her tribulation one by one after boarding her vessel. It was easy for him, given that he didn't have any of the honor of the Yautjas and was much more murderous than your common Bad Blood, that, and he had Ion Cannons to make sure all the humans had to defend themselves were the most outdated weapons on hand and a very dark and cold ship to run along.

Once they all were killed and only she remained, the monster decided to show himself in the flesh. It seemed that since Yautja are preferably carnivorous, and most humans do prefer meat, he found it easy to ransack human vessels, or so he admitted. Humans also have a lot of smarts on them from time to time, so one of his best chances at finding someone to kill him was within a human's own luck and skills. As far as he said, anything would be better than to die once the others from his species catch him, and if his objective could not defend itself... well, that wouldn't be a problem after a short fight.

Elvira had been lucky that the same disease that made Yautjas act as erratically as the so called 'Slayers' also gave them extreme quirks, like the boastful attitude of this one, as he called himself 'Prince'.

An excessive time without letting go of the testosterone and adrenaline accumulated on their bodies could turn their brains into mush, turning them into something much more dangerous than a Bad Blood that did things in a certain pattern or simply went out of control because he/she had no other choice or, in some cases, for medical reasons when a mental instability came to be apparent. In Prince's case, it seemed that he had twelve times the output of other Yautjas, so he would enter a frenzy state from time to time and kill anything in his path when his muscles and reflexes became highlighted, literally, as the blood pumping through the excessively amplified limbs inflates the veins. His body suffered greatly from the outbursts and he would probably not live for more than a few years, but it didn't seem to bother him.

All of this had been theorized in part thanks to part of his blood from the ship Elvira used, so it could be a pile of bull, but Weyland-Yutani had much more experience with Yautja than most other companies, much like with Xenomorphs, that, and that Prince had been quite the talker once he had been promised danger. That, and Elvira had seen him during his rage, though it had been only once, so she knew quite a bit even for a one time meeting.

Still…

"I don't like the idea of letting anyone survive" He growled, the sound of his wristband letting the blade free was as obvious as the nearly half a meter long blade cutting the table and pointing at Elvira "Give me a good reason, or I carve a hole out of this station either getting out or dying here, and make it fast before I decide I don't care"

"Tell me then…"

Elvira decided that her best bet: It was time to call for his pride, and his fear.

Yautja do not fear, they may have aversions to some things, but the only thing that could determine as 'fearing' something would be to lose one's honor and standing. While it is not something extremely bad, as even as a slave they are the best species (though lowly treated), losing one's honor means, in some case, death… or worse. Yet, those that were not part of the clans, those that had turned renegades, did have fear.

Fear of being caught again, fear of being 'cured', judged or simply shunned in public.

"How will you evade your own kind's authorities? We know you haven't been able to come here without your ship, which is the reason as to why we arranged this meeting in this place. By now you will have a little bug on your vessel, one that we have geared to give the same readings as human vessels in need of help" Elvira gave a big smirk as the growling of Prince grew in power "Of course, we will only use that if you decide not to comply with what we ask since we are giving you many things that could come back to hurt us" Still, she changed her face to a more 'understanding' one "But I could always give you a little datapad that you could use to search for said bug so you could deactivate it. It will cost you though; you would need to admit that you fear sparing anyone you meet"

"I spared you, didn't I?" The blade from the predator rested on Elvira's neck "Why would I fear to do it again?"

"Because you would have to carry that man here, because it would mean you would release someone very dangerous from your grasp, because it is someone that can kill you as easily as you could kill him and your very instinct is asking for a fight against him" Elvira pushed the blade away with a finger "How could someone like you let a potential executor go by without trying to tear it apart? It would go against what you think, and it would force you to watch your back for once"

The growl only grew in tone more and more.

"You fear to die" Elvira chuckled.

That did it.

A tremendous roar overcame anything else that could've been hear: Elvira's scream as a blast of plasma went up, the shot of the personal caster on the Yautja's shoulder, the shattering explosion as the plasma bolt broke the only light on the room and, more important, the hiss as the Yautja took his mask away only to catch Elvira's throat and bite down with his mandibles in a way that he would slightly pierce the sides of her mouth, prompting another yell that was muffled by the monster's strength.

"I-Do-Not-FEAR!"

With impressive strength, the Yautja took Elvira and threw her against the nearest wall. She was lucky to hit with the side instead of her back, the snapping of bones would mean the whole arm was in need of healing, the crunch on her hips that she would remain in bed for a time, but even with her scream it would only mean she could someday get up again, instead of have her back broken or her neck snapped like a twig.

Luck on its most raw nature, and the least merciful of them all, as while in this state she could hear nothing or feel nothing but the pain. She didn't even notice when the Yautja took the blade and marked with a light cut, one under each one of her eyes. Elvira would be watched, and when he felt like it, he would come to get her.

At least she was still alive, to her it would be all that mattered. Well, that was not true, once the recue team came back, no one able to tell how the Yautja had escaped, she would come to enjoy the feeling of everyone caring for her as if she was a queen, and she CARED for that. How could she not? After all, the Yautja had taken the pad and had also 'stolen' all he needed to have his weapons on the ready.

Mercenaries always work for the money, even if there are some… collaterals.

* * *

John would wake up with the biggest headache in his entire life. He had stolen liquor more than once, in fact, by his nineteen birthday he stole some once a week whenever he could. It was a way to evade real world you say? Nah, the alcohol's stench made most big creatures stay away, since it sometimes was worse than the odor in the underground, that, and it worked great to help his wounds when they did the normal thing and healed slowly.

Something MUCH better than the pounding in his head and the burning on his throat!

With a heavy sigh, and the rubbing of his head, John got up, feeling his clothes slightly shredded and heavier with wetness even after losing part of their integrity. After checking on his body, and seeing nothing, but a slight deformity, a burn, on his throat, he pressed onto much more important matters, namely: Food.

He wasn't sure how, but he downed half the food he had been saving, and by how long he had been out (probably a whole day, as it was morning again), he was lucky that the slightly bent cans and bottles had still food that was edible. Putrefaction in this world was much worse thanks to how powerful some of the bacteria are, so even someone in the sewers would be hard pressed to eat something that had expired, and only bacteria became scavengers with how viral things got.

Still he had been able to catch all the food still edible and he had made sure the supplies were all used. By the time they had been chewed you would've been feeling full, but John only felt slightly pleased, as he soon found that even the wound on his neck had been reduced greatly, but it would not recover one hundred percent of what had it been. On the inside he still felt fire, even if water and food had calmed it, but it was obvious something had changed and he was ultimately sure that it would be for the worst, whenever it came to stop.

Finally he felt happy, or as happy as it could be, so he took everything out:

The gun was slightly damaged, but he was sure it would be easily repaired in the bunker whenever he arrived. He did reload it fully, extra round accounted for. Now he had thirteen less on his possession, and he had only killed three of those things with it, one of them by pure luck. The one he clobbered with the weapon did not count.

It was a shame, but the shotgun had been beaten much harder than he thought. The thing wouldn't be able to use the secondary hatch it had to load the secondary weapon (Solid slugs, very common variation for security forces that expect reinforced problems). If he found the ammo it would be worth scrap to him. This would need someone savvy with weaponry to repair, and it was not him, probably not Jacob or the others at the bunker, and certainly not the girl.

Luckily, or unluckily, as you see fit, the motion detector was in perfect condition. The screen was partially smashed, but the glass was not all that important, at least the upper part (The lower, though, was a bitch if it was broken). There should be spares in the supermarket as this equipment was widely used for many things, not only the military. That also meant he would be able to find charges for the thing; otherwise it would die down with extensive use in a few days in normal environment, in one such as the one in Troptomos? Thirty four hours, forty with some luck, much less now that it was slightly damaged.

He did the sensible thing next: He took the gun and went to the second room he had explored yesterday. The corpse of the man had been cleaned off, as he had guessed. Probably some of the giant bugs had made it up here and had decided to go for the carcass and not the living ones. Luckily for them, human composition allowed a lower putrefaction rate, but it had been obvious by the smell alone that it had been cleaned moments after he had left it there. It only smelled of _bones_.

John had a hard time feeling sorry for him, or for the girl. He was a survivor, so if you didn't survive, it was your own fault. Whatever had happened he would not talk, which was his trademark, nor would he give comfort. No one gave it to him, but he would put her on her place if it came to depression or violence. The least she could do was to do what the man couldn't: Survive.

And he was no one's babysitter, not for long at least, or so he hoped.

That reminded him… The pistol probably was not the best way to get inside the room with the girl. He was nearly waiting for a Xenomorph to jump at him once he entered the one with the remains of the corpse, but it hadn't been the case. John threw the weapon with the pile of food and equipment and decided to 'say' hi to the girl.

It was going to be a bitch, this situation.

"Hisssss…"

'Oh, fuck'

Wait, it already was.

A drone, one heavier in build that the ones that would be described as 'normal', jumped at him just as the door decided it was time to die and fall on the floor. He had been surprised as it was, so the jump had been expected, but not reacted to. The weight was unlike that expected from these creatures (That used speed to supply power instead of mass), and the speed of the drones was obviously not impaired by this obvious muscle that the creature had on itself.

Weight aside, the fucker felt smooth and not too hard, in the literal sense of the word. It probably had molten not too long ago, so the chitin would still be susceptible to brute force from a human, much more than normal anyway (Xenomorphs are NOT hardy beings, their form is made to deflect attacks, not withstand them), so he only needed to press…

*CRACK!*

A loud shriek nearly made his ears explode. He had bent the hand of the Xeno as they fell down. His quick thinking was getting better and the adrenaline was coming much faster. This was something that would worry him, in fact it was worrying him right now, but it didn't matter when you had a creature that was about to murder you with the other claw as it retracted from John's body, giving a swipe at his face with the other arm.

Movies are one thing, but this was completely different, reality tends to fuck you up, and in this case, John was quick enough to evade, well… most of him was. The claw from the thumb managed to get his ear and it tore away, shredding the whole thing from his left side as John cried out in mad rage, kicking the thing away from his chest.

"You asshole!"

John had reacted by getting up and reaching over towards his pistol. He had it on his hands and was aiming at the Xeno when he heard a young woman's voice coming from the thing.

And on a more detailed look, he saw differences, and tears.

The domed head was shorter and different of a drone; it was rigged on the sides of it with the underside being soft and the upper section having very small rigged spaces in a webbed fashion. The sides of the large cranium had two small marks in the forms of a stretched z that had the size just about what an eye would be. They didn't seem to be able to blink, but from the edges of such marks drops of water, tears, fell down, they also seemed to turn black from time to time, as if to simulate blinking.

That mouth had lips, they weren't human like, but also not Xenomorph like, it was a mixture of the two, with also a normal tongue, even if it looked like the same biomechanical muscle that the body had, though the coloration was a pale green. There was no secondary mouth, yet the teeth were sharp and, in-between some of the moans and cries, the lips retracted and the face turned more Xenomorph like, including the holes at the side of the mouth.

Arms and legs not deformed like those of a Xenomorph, as they would only work correctly while walking in a bipedal manner and could, probably, function only slightly better than a human if the thing had to go on all fours. The arms also had claws, but between the cries they retracted, showing smooth human like hands and also the fact that the bone structure of the body was not apparent, not even in the chest, where two protrusions were standing as obvious as day. The only thing fully Xenomorphic was that large tail with an elongated and sharp edge at the end.

This thing was, most probably, one of those that had been fussed together. The one that was within that monster was, obviously, the girl.

However, how had it happened? That question went into his head as he also tried to decipher why she had attacked and why she was crying. At least it took his mind away from the excruciating pain that the head was feeling from the migraine and the burning sensation given as the ear was being restored from scratch.

"Why do you ask? Do you care? I know you took him from me!"

The Xenomorph looked like she was about to lunge at him, but instead she caressed her hurt hand. Somehow she had read his thoughts, so he tried thinking simply of _why_ and _what did she mean_.

"My father… you took him away from me! He found me when I was going for supplies to the group I was with not far from here… He promised me we would be safe and with food and water in the Weyland-Yutani HQ…" The Xenomorph went to her knees and squirmed against the wall "We got here and something knocked us out… It was you! I know it was you! Who else would be here? What did you do to me?"

As it seemed she only could see within his mind when he thought of something with strength, John decided to think on all he knew. It seemed he was able to communicate with at least a human morphed into a Xeno, so if this was of use, she would see all that had happened until this point, including his whole story.

Thinking of one's story is easy, as far as you remember it. Many end up having only images, but the information associated to them is so great, that only the one thinking about it can digest it, and even a machine of this time, probably even those of higher alien beings, would be unable to go through it as fast as the one that had been through it all. Two minds linked together, however, would be able to surf through the seas of pictures, of images, emotions and all kind of desires from what it was and what could be, in as much as a minute.

"Oh… god…"

Puking could also be done in a minute, though hers went through the building whole.

It seemed remembering his whole life was both a brutal thing to do when someone prodded on your mind and you inflamed their own with loads and loads of information. A human mind would never be burned for lack of space, we don't live long enough to fill even a part of it, and we never forget, we just lump things into the 'unimportant' bin and let them there until you sometimes remember it. It is a whole different thing to have two lifetimes inside, well, it wouldn't be if you had the time to enjoy those lives, but to be 'force feed' all of it?

Well, maybe the problem was that she had seen a life of misery, brutal murders of creatures and the usual live feeding, as there were few creatures that he could kill without first munching a part of them as raw as possible. He had to admit that, compared to a normal person, he probably was close to a Neanderthal in manners, but, hey! He was alive, he was human and he had no one to worry about. She was fucked up.

"Fuck… Christ… What the hell was that?" She groaned as John got closer, to her hand and snapped it back to place, earning a hiss and a cry of pain, and also a nearly fatal save as the tail came less than an inch from his throat "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

He just hinted to her wound, to his ear and basically being at equal ground after he had pounded him and probably made part of his wounds from the last fight re-open, which meant nearly broken bones yet again.

"Whatever"

She hissed at him as she studied her hand. It had been snapped back in place very easily, obviously, for what she gleamed through his mind, Xenomorphs (If that is what… she was now) healed quickly, at least these ones. She also saw in her mind the images gleamed through his, the way that a NORMAL Xenomorph would be born. It made her shudder, but not as much as she shuddered once she reached the point where memories ended.

She reached yesterday's fight, and her father.

She pushed John away with her tail, gaining impulse to charge at the door, breaking through it as if it was wet cardboard. The young woman always told her father how she wanted to be an actress someday, using the old special effects from the black and white movies. This would, in any other occasion, extract a grin or a chuckle from her, and somehow John could feel that from the girl, as if their minds had been intertwined together. He also could feel the agony as she screeched and cried over her father's remains.

For this to pass, it would take hours, many hours, if it ever stopped for her. It had hit when she had all her life with her father, and she loved him, John could feel that. Sympathy creped to his mind as he felt her emotions, but he swatted such a thing away for now, at least as much as possible, as there were priorities here: Get her in a stable mood, and then bolt away.

Time was of the essence.

* * *

Time was NOT of the essence, not to the girl at least. It was night again and rain was pouring down on the pile of rocks she had erected near the stairs, where part of the walls had crumbled during the fight that took place yesterday.

Marino hadn't said a thing during her recollection of every scrap of human bone she could find. It soon was revealed that she had the eyes of a human, or the eyesight at least, though any human pheromones showed in her vision as an 'aura' of blue around the object, which grew fainter the less of the pheromones they had. She had been able to find all the bones of her father, though not all intact and, obviously, not all in good places.

An octopus doll, sewed by him, had been placed in a very compact box that her father had given her to take her secrets anywhere. She had left a note, as she still could write with the hands she sported, for anyone that would find the remains. After that, she had piled up what was left and constructed the grave.

She hadn't muttered a word, nor felt anything, since that.

"He was a good father" Marino muttered finally.

John just eyed her. He had been standing there the whole time. He knew she needed solitude more than confort now, she could give that through their link quite easily, but she had let the link stay, even if John knew that a creature like a Xenomorph could be able to break them, except probably the one with their queen, with ease. She didn't want to be alone because she knew that she would probably do something stupid.

Yet she knew not what to say, or what she wanted someone else to say to her.

"I… suppose you wouldn't understand, not with your own as it is. I have two lives to compare… I suppose I am the lucky one" Marino's tail waved from one side to the other, scratching the concrete as she did so. She was searching for anything that would make her slightly happy "My mother is still out there, she didn't want to move. She divorced my dad when he decided to come here, nine years ago. I am nineteen, so I was angry to leave my mother. I kept in touch until this happened… I would like to see her again someday"

Marino felt talkative, John felt envy. Neither looked at each other, neither uttered another word, or a thought, for that matter, she just gave him a nod and he walked away.

He knew she was not going to do anything stupid now, Marino just needed to pay her respects and take her time. She would not let her life go to waste, not at least… at least until she found her mother. For all she knew, she would never see her again, not without getting a bullet somewhere in her body, but she had some hope to cling to. Unlike John, she had something to LIVE for, not to die for.

It made him felt bad inside, but he wouldn't care. He just got to the supplies she and her father had, objectivity was all in his mind and he just in need for something useful that would help us. If she had something to survive for, he would help, as much as he could at least, it would give him points with Jacob. Marino had obviously felt that, but she did understand him as much as he understood her now. It was a screwed up fast bolted relationship, in part one that could be described as a symbiosis, as he finally had someone to 'talk' to and she had someone that understood her when she had basically been an outcast, since she was of the last to come to live here.

And also she was basically illiterate and had dyslexia. She was not stupid, she just couldn't read, so she was 'different' and kids are very, very cruel. Maybe that reinforced his feelings towards the young woman, after all she was all but normal now, even if she was just 'different' before. He was also all but normal, but he was technically forged as a monster, at least one of vengeance.

If all of those that he would find were this weird, he could find a reason to live to, as it would be some short of a family.

But… well…

'Keep on dreaming, John' He thought to himself, not letting it surface so the girl wouldn't 'hear' it 'You just got into _society_ and you are trying to fit in already. You are not a pack animal anymore'

He harrumphed as he took count for at least a bag full of food and water, fifty more pistol rounds, twenty shotgun shells and four 'expanded' clips of Pulse Rifle. Expanded clips means that each clip came with a grenade for the grenade launcher, since they came like that in the packs so two clips could fit with two grenades with no problem. When military personnel got bored, they got 'inventive' with names.

In the little time he had to fight for his life, not only for food and survival, but to avoid monsters from the real world, John came to understand why the security forces or the colonial marines did stupid things like those when they became bored: Anything is better than to sit and mull over where you will die or when your friends will be the next causality. Life lasts longer doing idiotic things when you know your name is on the reaper's most wanted list.

John took the packs and pulled them out alongside the ammunition. He had found that there was indeed another pistol and two more clips, but one of them, with the pistol included, was half melted and bent in a horrible way for a weapon. It would never work again. There were also the remains of a shotgun, but it was obviously melted from, probably, a short very close to the user. Maybe Maria's father had been knocked after the young girl, so he had been able to fight, though obviously he had the burns from the last day because he had done his best.

But doing your best was not enough. You either did it, or died, there was nothing in the middle.

"Take the name tag" John almost jumped as he got off the room with the packs "Take his nametag from the backpack" Marino ordered in a level voice.

Not wanting to alter the girl, as it could be felt that she was again unstable, John did just as she said and took her father's tag from the deceased's backpack. Surprisingly, a combat knife came down from a pocket that was just under the tag. It was a nice way to hide a weapon in plain sight, as far as you didn't have to pass any strict security area.

"He was in the marines for a while" She told him "Those knifes are serrated in the back and slim in the tip. They are made of alloys that, he said, would shrug off even the worst of chemicals. I suppose my dad did well hiding Xenomorphs under the nickname 'bugs' when he told me those stories" Marino shuddered as she took both backpacks. With her new body, she was obviously quite strong "I never thought scary stories were real, but at least I am lucky to SEE that they are… and maybe that they end up in a good way"

John only nodded; he could do little else for the girl right now. She was going to be thinking of her dad for a long time now and it was obvious that she was also going to do her best on the contrary, but being direct with his thoughts, he knew that she would be quite unable to let go until she did something very violent. It was not recommended, but it was therapeutic, and what had let him live a 'normal' life without going insane.

Marino just scoffed.

"If we find a 'normal' Xenomorph, or that big one that escaped you, I will kill something" She grumbled as she took the shotgun from the pile on the ground and loaded it with eight shells "My dad taught me self defense and how to fire a gun, and since I should be able to rip them apart without having a bad time with acidic blood" Marino gave a very disturbing grin "I will get them to come at me"

For a moment, a sickening feeling washed over John. Revenge, it was revenge, something that he had felt all his life, but hadn't been able to understand as to how it would be noticed if it came from someone else. He stood where he was as Marino prepared the weapon and used her tail to pin in place both of the bags. She was acting so natural, so much like he felt she acted on her day to day basis… maybe it was because she had lost all she had had during the last nine years of her life, the only person that had been with her during half her life, or because it was something that could run so deep that it would pass you without showing itself until it was too late?.

It was worrisome in every way at least. Was this kind of feeling what had come to be John's whole being after so long? Maybe he was the problem as they had this kind of link after they had meet? His sudden, and, in truth, only hope after this kind of realization was that he only wanted someone else to be present.

He was not able, not mentally, nor physically, to help the young woman right now, and he felt a sudden urge to stop and think as much as something else in him called on to get moving and approach the eventual end of this ordeal, only to get close to his father.

In the end, his mind hardened and he returned to his original thoughts: Job done, punishment given. The girl would understand soon enough that she had a chance of getting to her mother, so she would either realize she could still live, or she would throw her life away. To him it was all the same, as he had nothing to live for but to get at his father, so both results would come in due time. John was not going to delve in something that he would ultimately not change unless she wanted it to. He had only his own end in mind and it was an end that HE would NOT change at least.

"Shall we get going?"

Marino had been privy to only part of what he was thinking. John was used to have his thoughts only for himself, so it was not hard to hide at least part of it. Still, the girl was able to at least notice part, and one of those thoughts basically asked for them to continue.

John ultimately nodded as he took a look at the equipment before picking all he didn't need to store into the backpack. Only in case, and hoping that things would maybe go smoothly from here on. John took the motion detector and the Pulse Rifle. With his strength it was not hard to carry both things (Shooting would be something else entirely, though), so he and Marino went onwards, towards the walkway that connected with the next building. If things went their way, they would find the other girl soon enough. This time things should go without 'accidents' if possible.

* * *

'Interesting… But she is perfectly well'

On the roof, and seeing them get going, Kah awaits, not wishing to test his luck with both the human and the pseudo Xenomorph. While she would be unable to run at full speed like a normal Xenomorph, she would still be faster and much stronger than a human, plus, she would be able to see him.

And shotguns hurt, a lot, even if they fire normal shots.

First and foremost, Kah is a medic; he knows that there are two universal truths in warfare: 'There is no such thing as overkill' and 'The heaviest armor is as strong as its weakest point'. His own armor had showed that small things, such as a drop of acid blood, could mess with the whole thing, so a point blank shot by a shotgun would most surely end with him having a hole somewhere, and he wanted only to survive, so that was out of the question. It also meant that he would still be put down even if he used his whole strength to fight them, as if one of them survived, he was fucked.

Kicking ass of any short would be for later anyway. There was something very strange and he had three bad news to deliver already, including the also 'not so good news' that weren't really bad, once compared with the others that is.

Three Yautjas had already lost their lives. It had been less than one hundred hours and three had died, their self destruction mechanism had been partially deactivated and small parts of technology had been taken away towards the building that the notes he took showed as Weyland-Yutani's spaceport. While he was interested in humans, he knew that The Company was the worst thing in existence and that they probably had designed the Xenomorphs with some tweaks, such as the idea of killing and disarming others of his kin to get anything they could back to where they would meet their makers.

How did they get them to be such lap dogs? Kah didn't know, the notes specified tested variants, strengths, weaknesses, possible mutations or alterations, but nothing apart from that. The notes regarding the human led to believe Yautja technology had been used for the things he had, but the small remains captured would only be electronics that could grant nothing to The Company, either for building materials or information.

Why, then, were the creatures taking the remains? It would only serve of some use to another Yautja.

Of course…

"Kah, you are letting the human go again" Char's voice growled gently from behind his back "And there are a lot of bugs near your trophies, I won't be the one cleaning them, or retaking them if that human finds them interesting"

"At least you haven't shot the Kainde Amedha" He said, not taking the view from his wristband as he used one of the newest models to check the information he was rummaging through. The 3D images and holograms were great for someone with his vision "How did you know it is a hybrid much like him?"

"I didn't" Char deadpanned "The mask's detector acts the same way with it"

"Sounds good enough coming from you" Kah eyed the thirty images that he had in his medical hud. Three were red, the rest were bright blue… and then one turned to green "Ssssssssssssssssssssssshit"

"What?"

The pair had already gone away and into the building, getting down a few levels to explore, Kah felt confident that they didn't hear him as he roared in anger.

"Our family sticks together for this hunt, right?" Kah looked frantically through the information he had, fear was not something a Yautja, hybrid or not, felt commonly "QUICK! Tell me Char!"

"Yes! They are together!" Char took a step back as she saw how Kah was reacting "What is the matter?"

"Three are dead, from the novices, three are already gone" Kah's tone was of sorrow, or as much as a Yautja could emulate it "One, one just got infected" Anger, however, was much easier to feel and emote.

Char remained silent as her brother typed something in the console of his wristband. Dying with honor was the least thing that a hunter could do during a hunt, be it a novice unblooded, a veteran arbitrator, or an elder. Getting captured by the enemy was a shame that could not be erased without much, much work. Being impregnated by Kainde Amedha was the worst fate possible and the whole group of novice hunters would be obliged to hunt down that precise creature.

An Abomination.

"Elder Ski-Hivha, I need to talk to you"

Char snapped from it as she looked at her brother and the holographic screen that now had a simple white like line in the middle of a blue hued screen. The line moved as the terse and quite fierce voice of the elder matriarch, Ski-Hivha, answered the call.

"What do you wish for, Kah" The voice sounded all but pleased.

"I have reports to make" Kah gave a slight hit to his chest, fist tight, to at least give the basic required salute to his superior "I know you told me to use this on emergencies, but there are four details you should know"

"Go ahead, Kah" The matriarch sounded impatient "You were the only one that stood to attention when I asked you all to help the humans, per our pact"

Char went wide eyed at that, there had been some kind of briefing, much like those humans make, in the private chambers of the matriarch. She had said that only those that had confidence in their skills should come, the rest received the basic 'Good hunt' before being told to do their best and come back with glory or not come back at all.

"The human is safe for now, Matriarch, he has also found some interesting help, but that is not important at the moment" It was surprising how level headed Kah sounded. He was one of those that took death and Abominations for that matter, much worse than the rest "But there are complications, such as three of our numbers already dead"

The Matriarch said nothing, in most first hunts most unblooded didn't return "A fourth has been taken by the Kainde Amedha and is already infected" At that there was a hiss, but nothing else "Also, the Kainde Amedha either have human allies after being modified by the humans, or those modifications allow them to deactivate, partially, the devices at our wrists, because I doubt I have missed any nuclear explosion in the vicinity"

There came a very simple answer.

"Pauk!"

And then growling, yelling, threatening, curses that are better not translated and the smashing sound of something very delicate and very hard to replace.

"We need a level head" After whatever carnage had been done, Shi-Hivha sounded much calmer "You will have to search for everyone. Groups on the first hunt are common, like your brothers and sisters, but they will be enforced now. When you inform of everyone about the need to lead as many humans to safety for our bargain to go on, you will also need to inform them of the Abomination" The growl behind the communication was so high pitched that there would be no surprise if the Matriarch would add another scar to her face, something common for the large female as her anger issues were on par with most males "Recover whatever was left of those who die. The oomans will not have anything we haven't exchanged fairly"

"There is another issue, Matriarch"

Another insult, not plainly translated to English (though you could mix a few of the worst and you would have an approximate of what she just said) came from the other side of the line.

"The spy system caught something four hours ago, standard human time" Instead of more curses, the Matriarch waited "I am not good with electronics, but I could filter the readings. Another Yautja vessel has entered the system. It is a very large hunting vessel, but it has cloaking to protect it from other scanners, as I directed our pilots to get a quick scan. Humans got it by pure luck"

"How big?" Came the quick and stern question.

"A fourth of the Clan Ship you command, Matriarch"

By human means this meant it was around the size of a frigate, probably bigger, much bigger. The Clan ship on itself was literally a space station capable of jumping through hyperspace thanks to the capabilities of going at light speed. Humans had just barely mastered this art not long ago, but it was just employed in the bigger ships, thanks to the power needed.

"There is no official hunt declared anywhere near this system" The Matriarch growled and the sound of mandibles colliding quickly showed unrest "Much less one so big. It would be able to carry a full party of twenty, maybe more warriors. We haven't asked for help to any of the clans that were with us in this deal. No one was interested in helping create safe havens for humans in the worst case scenario of a war coming between our species"

Char had been silent and still, but that made her shiver a bit. War? Hunting was tradition, war had been the bane of their own species and most other species in the known space had made it clear that if they went in another war they would be terminated. It was extremely hard to get any other species within the Milky Way because of how little any other creature believed in the Yautja's self control.

"Nor have we received messages forcing a hunt here to eradicate any possible traces" The Matriarch went on "Whoever it is, it is not someone that is within the clans"

"A Bad Blood?" Kah's stance hardened. Char didn't want to imagine what would happen if it was…

"No, but close" Ski-Hivha let on a sigh, not human like, but close, something she had caught on after being the one to teach Kah to fight (Or better say that she learned to get exasperated quickly with him) "We think it is what oomans call a 'Slayer', one of our kin that has lost it to the rage and desire to kill. Much more dangerous than Bad Bloods, usually kept in pens like animals by some groups of those that betray us" The Matriarch relaxed her voice for a moment "There are around twelve known cases where the Yautja was strong enough to overcome madness, but they still seek destruction, their own or the destruction of those they chose"

"Are you hinting that one of those heard of this?" Kah looked up. Char did the same.

The vision of the mask could maybe detect a fickle of a ship that large, it sure did catch the large Clan Ship. It would take a minute as Ski-Hivha thought of her next words, but there was a quick flash of energy that seemed to approach the planet.

"There are many that don't like what we are doing. Humans think we are not civilized, but even our kin can play politics, or be very dirty without compromising their honor" Her voice was grave, cautious and had a hidden danger to it "Someone could easily get such a dangerous and miscarried Yautja to find a way to make this even more dangerous for you, the humans and, in return, all of us who pledged for this plan to continue"

"What should we do then?" Kah lowered his mask as he looked to his wrist. Another mark had turned colors and flickered red "We just lost another one"

"…" Static came for a second "I doubt that one of our stray kin is the one doing this, not yet anyway. He or she would go for the strongest opponent, not novices that would fall so easily" Clicking sounds those coming from the large nails of the Matriarch as her patience grew short, took most of the two siblings' attention. The Matriarch was growing angry and wary to the point where she could probably call the hunt off and send everyone there, she was a very protective (and vindictive) female for her species "Proceed as said: Find those that live, order them to go in groups, to hunt the Kainde Amedha and to 'guide' humans to a safe place. If they have to hurt them it doesn't matter, but save them as fast as possible. I am sure that the new arrival will try to kill them first, since they can be the most dangerous opponent out there"

"I will do it, Matriarch" That said, Kah cut communications and looked at his sister "You don't seem pleased"

"I was promised a hunt" Of course she was not pleased, she didn't need to show her face, nor give him a look, which, by the way, could freeze a sea "Not a military operation. Our kind CANNOT do this"

"Think of it as a very hard, very rewarding hunt" Kah smirked under his mask as he walked to the building's edge "If we survive, father will let us do whatever we please because THIS is a hunt, yet not the kind that you would commonly hear of, right?"

Kah smiled briefly, but he just took all the strength he could muster and jumped to the next building before his sister could inquire. Char, on the other side, growled as she looked up to the sky. This world was very clean, enough to see the stars during the day, whenever the clouds weren't in the middle. What she liked to see, however, was if the ship was still around here.

A minute later she shrugged and jumped. The ship would come down, or not, she did not care. It would be a single enemy and they all would be together. Worst case scenario included a few causalities; however her family had been practicing together since they were kids. Unlike most Yautja they didn't feel the need to go their separate ways.

Not yet at least.

Char knew she would go as fast as she got her shire's permission, no sooner. Most her sisters didn't want to go away and Kah was probably going to stay at their shire's Clan Ship as a medic. Char just wanted fame, glory, to make her shire proud. It would not be found in a Clan Ship that, like most, thought that females should be breeders, caretakers, teachers or medics. They couldn't even create or repair weapons by law! Each clan was different, but the oldest of traditions lived on, sometimes for the worst.

Female hunting clans were hard to come by, and most times they only did so when the time for mating season was in order. If they had male pups, they would give them to the father's clan. If they had female pups, they would stay within the female clan, but the father could, if he so desired, visit, but that was it (a Yautja mother would easily kill a male if she was enraged, so do not touch baby, ok?).

Plans for the future, but as she landed on the next building, not looking up again, she had to question. 'Would there be a future?'. This was not a normal hunt, in fact this wasn't even a 'mission' for warriors or arbitrators, whom would probably find it reckless and strange enough to accept. This was a test to prove whether many females and a few males, all of them unskilled in real combat, could manage to avert a dangerous crisis. Such danger only because no one else would probably wish to come to help, that, or because pride and honor would demand no call being made.

As she resigned herself to probably lose her life in this world, a bright flash came down from the sky, approaching fast towards the river's edge far away from her position.

Someone had decided to drop by.

_***Notes***_

Quick and to the point: Thanks for the reviews!


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